Osun guber election Tribunal adjourns sitting to Oct 4

The Osun State Election Petition Tribunal has adjourned sitting on the petition by Governor Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to October 4, 2022.

Justice Tertsea Kume, the tribunal’s chairman, set the date and gave the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Osun State governor-elect Ademola Adeleke seven days to respond to the pre-hearing form that had been served on them.

Prof. Kayode Olatoke, SAN, the attorney for the APC, had earlier informed the court that he was prepared to begin the pre-hearing session after filing his form TF008, in which issues for resolution were presented.

Olatoke responded to the tribunal’s request for advice by recommending that the case be put on hold for a few hours so that the respondents could also answer to the tribunal’s pre-hearing form.

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Counsel to INEC, Ben Ananaba, SAN, said the pre-hearing could not go on because he was just served with the pre-hearing form this morning, saying statutorily, they have seven days to respond.

Counsel to Adeleke, Bamidele Abolarin and counsel representing PDP, Nathaniel Oke, SAN, also requested the tribunal to give them the required seven days to respond.

Addressing newsmen after the sitting, Olagoke said the adjournment was not out of place, but the tribunal had the power to abridge the days required for any of the parties to respond.

“We were supposed to begin pre-hearing session this morning but unfortunately, the respondents were served an application which they were to respond to.

Oke said : “what transpired in court was the preliminaries in respect of the totality trial of the petition”.

He said that PDP was ready to defend its victory in the last governorship election in the state , despite the urgly incident in 2018.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN ) reports that following the outcome of the July 16 governorship election in Osun, Oyetola and the APC filed a petition before the Election Petition Tribunal sitting at the State High Court, Osogbo.

The petitioners who were seeking justice challenged the results of the election in some of the Local Government Areas and prayed the Tribunal to return their mandate to them.

The INEC had declared Adeleke winner of the July 16 governorship election having polled a total number of 403,271 against 375,027 polled by Oyetola.

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