Appeal Court upholds Mimiko’s victory

The Court of Appeal in Akure, Ondo State on Monday dismissed the appeals filed by the Action Congress of Nigeria and the Peoples Democratic PRTY against the 2012 governorship victory of Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State.
The ACN candidate, Rotimi Akeredolu, and his PDP counterpart, Chief Olusola Oke, had appealed against the judgment of the Election Petitions Tribunal, which dismissed their petitions on the outcome of the October 20, 2012 governorship poll in the state.
The tribunal, under the chairmanship of Justice Andovar Kaka’an, had on May 3 affirmed that Mimiko, the Labour Party flag bearer, was duly elected as the winner of the election as declared by INEC on October 22, 2012.
Five candidates, including Oke and Akeredolu, filed petitions before the tribunal to challenge the results of the election and joined the Independent National Electoral Commission as respondents in the matter.
However, only the petitions of the PDP and the ACN candidates survived till May 3 when the judgment was delivered.
The tribunal dismissed both petitions on the grounds that the petitioners failed to prove allegations on the conduct of the election beyond reasonable doubt.
The duo of Akeredolu and Oke approached the Court of Appeal asking the court to set aside the judgment of the Kaka‘an-led tribunal.
While Akeredolu premised his appeal on 38 grounds, Oke’s appeal was based on 37 grounds, and some of the grounds were withdrawn in the course of prosecuting the appeal.
But the Court of Appeal, rather than setting aside the judgment of the tribunal, upheld all the submissions of the judges of the tribunal with only one exception.
The appellant court upheld that the issue of voters’ register as raised by the petitioners was not a pre-election matter but one that the tribunal had jurisdiction to entertain.
The five-man panel of judges that heard the appeal unanimously agreed in dismissing the appeal in a judgment that lasted about one and half hours.
Though the judgments concerning the two appeals were read separately by different judges, they were similar as the pleadings of the appellants while the matters to deal with were similar.
The court held that the appellants failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt the allegations of substantial non-compliance of the 2012 election with the Electoral Act.
Justice Daniel Kalio read the judgment concerning the appeal of the PDP candidate and listed what constituted non- compliance in an election.
Kalio said that the person contesting the results of an election must show how his allegation substantially affected the conduct and the outcome of an election.
The tribunal had described the issue of voters’ register raised by the appellants as germane but a pre-election matter.
The appellate court, however, said the complainants failed to prove how illegal injection of names substantially affected the conduct and the results of the said election.
Kalio, however, frowned at the failure of INEC to display the hard copy of the voters’ register as stipulated by the law, particularly with complaints that parties were unable to open the soft copies given them by the commission.
But in a swift reaction, the two candidates vowed to challenge the judgment at the Supreme Court.
They said that the judgments of the tribunal and that of the Court of Appeal were at variance with each other, especially on the issue of voters’ register, which was the main issue in the petitions.