A mild drama ensued on Thursday at the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal after witnesses of the All Progressives Congress (APC) revealed how result sheets of the poll were altered by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, against the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s, Senator Ademola Adeleke.
APC counsels led by Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) and Abiodun Owonikoko (SAN) while trying to rationalise alterations of election results as reflected in the forms EC8As, attempted to shift the legality of the alterations to the INEC ward collation agents.
They also laid blame on the provisions of the electoral guidelines issued for the conduct of the election.
However, the witnesses produced by APC failed to toe the line marked out by the APC legal team.
The witnesses all admitted that “any alteration of the result should have reflected on the pink copy, and signed by all party agents at the polling centers.”
They confirmed that in most cases, the alterations did not reflect on the pink copies, party agents’ names/signatures were either not written at all or were forged.
Onyechi Ikpeazu, the counsel to the petitioner, Senator Adeleke, was able to extract these facts from APC witnesses thereby buttressing PDP’s allegations and submissions that several election results were doctored to reduce the margin of PDP victory on September 22.
