Tribunal Reserves Judgement On Kashamu’s Election

The national and state House of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abeokuta, Ogun state capital, has reserved judgement in a petition brought before it against Senator Buruji Kashamu, representing Ogun East Senatorial District.

Buruji Kashamu

READ ALSO: NOT YET OVER: Read FG’s Plan On Kashamu’s Extradition Judgment

Prince Dapo Abiodun, the All Progressives Congress (APC) senatorial candidate in the March 28 Presidential and National Assembly elections has approached the tribunal in a case numbered EPT/SEN/ABK/001/2015, claiming that he was validly elected, but was denied victory.

At the resumed hearing yesterday, all the counsels in the matter adopted their final addresses and made final submission to further convince the court on their cases.

But after listening to all counsels, Justice Ebiowei Tobi, who is the chairman of the three man panel said he reserved judgement to a later date which will be communicated to counsels.

Earlier, counsel to the petitioner, Yusuf Ali (SAN) argued that result sheets made available to agents at the polling units were different from the Certified True Copies (CTC), brought before the court by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

In his alternative prayer, Ali also prayed the court to nullify Kashamu’s election on ground that Dapo Abiodun won the majority valid votes, adding that the senator was not qualified to contest the election in the first place because of the alleged drug related cases against him.

He said: “Our position is that we won the election, but was denied victory. The tribunal should restore us into the victory path, and that’s the summary of our case.

“We have the alternative prayers, one was that if we do the proper calculation of the valid votes, Dapo Abiodun would have the majority of valid votes, and we said based on that, nullify the election of Buruji and declare Dapo Abiodun the winner.

“In case the tribunal does not agree, by looking at the documents we brought after the conclusion of votes in each polling station, Dapo Abiodun’s agents were given copies of the result which we tendered but we need INEC to bring the CTC. We discovered that the ones they brought were different with the material particulars of the ones they gave to us on the day of the election.

“We then said if the tribunal agrees that such differences point to irregularities, we have asked the tribunal to nullify the election and order fresh election, those are our alternative prayers.”

Our allegation again was that Buruji Kashamu was not qualified to run for the election having regards to a lot of issue on his extradition and based on those issues, he shouldn’t have contested an election.”

In his counter arguement, Counsel to Kashamu, Ajibola Oluyede (SAN) said the petition was brought based on documents produced by the petitioner himself saying such documents are not admissible before the court.

He said: “You were in court and also saw that the petitioner’s case was based on documents he produced himself, and he rejected the documents that were produced by the umpire. 

“All we want is for the court to give its judgement. We are very confident that the court would uphold the decision of the electorate, the electorate has elected its senator.

“The tribunals are not set up to second guess the electorate and I observed that members of this tribunal are very matured and experienced judges; I am sure that they will do justice.”

READ ALSO: Court Dismisses Extradition Suit Against Kashamu

While Ali hinted that he would approach a higher court should the tribunal failed to grants his prayers, Oluyede insisted that justice must be done.

A couple of weeks ago, an Abuja Federal High Court, dismissed its application for an order to extradite the Ogun-East Senator in the National Assembly.

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