Senate ex-spokesman, Adeyeye petitions Appeal Court to review judgment

Former spokesman of the Senate, Senator Dayo Adeyeye, has asked the Court of Appeal to revisit the judgment it delivered which upturned his victory in the February 23, 2019 senatorial election in Ekiti State. Until November 6 when the appellate court ruled against his election, Adeyeye of the APC was the Senate spokesman and represented Ekiti South Senatorial District.

Adeyeye, in a petition to the President of the Court of Appeal, is requesting a review of the court’s judgment which declared Senator Abiodun Olujimi winner of the election. In the nine-page petition, the ex-lawmaker claimed 22,834 votes were cancelled from his votes based on unproven allegations when evidence of ballot papers declared by INEC and result sheets signed by polling agents of Senator Olujimi and PDP showed that he polled 77,621 votes against Senator Olujimi’s 53,741 votes.

Drawing parallels with the Imo governorship appeal involving Hope Uzodinma and Emeka Ihedioha, Adeyeye said while the central issue in Ihedioha’s case was the propriety of accepting INEC result sheets (form EC8A) tendered by the police, his contention is the “propriety of accepting the hearsay evidence contained in the personal account of results of PDP and Sen Olujimi.”

“The evidence in Imo was official forms of INEC reportedly from each 388 polling units. The evidence in my case were personal sheets of paper prepared outside the view of the justices, INEC, police, APC and all other political parties,” he said. The former minister alleged that the tribunal refused to consider several issues he raised in the course of the trial, such as failure to consider his reply brief and sundry fundamental issue, failure to determine the effect of non-production of ballot papers allegedly inspected by PW15, that the Exhibit P85 relied upon by the tribunal was arithmetically and statistically flawed, failure to determine the incompetence of the petition for want of appropriate relief and that the tribunal lacked the “jurisdiction to wholly transfer the counting and or recounting of ballot papers to PDP and Senator Olujimi.” He described his petition as a “judicial time bomb” on which he has a duty to put judicial authorities on notice.

Daily Trust