Barely three weeks after the Ekiti governorship election, candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Segun Oni has approached the election petition tribunal to challenge outcome of the poll.
The governing All Progressives Congress candidate, Biodun Oyebanji emerged winner having scored the highest number of the total votes cast in the June 18 governorship poll.
According to the official results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Oyebanji garnered 187,057 votes to defeat other candidates contestants including Oni who polled 82, 211 votes and came first runners-up.
After studying the election result for over two weeks, the SDP candidate headed to the tribunal in the premises of the Ekiti State High Court, Ado-Ekiti on Thursday evening to submit petitions challenging the victory of the APC candidate.
Speaking with journalists shortly after filing the litigation, Oni said he was challenging the outcome of the election because the excercise was fraught with irregularities to his disadvantage.
The SDP candidate said that he and his party’s leadership decided to approach the election tribunal to reclaim mandate freely given to them by vast majority of Ekiti people.
He said: “I’m here this evening to submit my petition in accordance to law and we are doing this to defend the sanctity of the electoral system. I’m challenging the election result because I believe that I won.”
Read Also: Ooni: BVAS has improved electoral process
But, an APC chieftain and former Deputy Speaker, Chief Taiwo Olatunbosun, said that the decision of the SDP candidate to challenge Oyebanji’s victory in Court was a welcome development.
In a telephone chat with our reporter on Friday in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti state capital Olatunbosun, said there was no cause for alarm over the petition.
He said it was glaring from the results across the 2445 polling units in the state that the electorates voted massively for Oyebanji and subsequently declared the winner after polling the highest number of votes.
Olatunbosun added that the petition filed against Oyebanji’s victory at the June 18 election was doomed to fail because the poll was adjudged by international and domestic observers to be freest, fairest and most credible in the state’s electoral history.
He said though it was his constitutional right to seek redress, the decision of Oni and his party to challenge the outcome of the election clearly depicts his alleged sheer desperation for power.
He added: “What God has ordained and people have massively stamped through their votes can’t be changed by wishful thinking. And the truth of the matter is that I don’t know why any individual should always be desperate and want to question the authority of the God.
“It’s unfortunate that we still have some element that are believing that if it’s not them it can’t be another person. I have seen overtime that if some people are given the opportunity they will petition God. If Oni and his co-travelers do not still believe they are still suffering from fantasy of their assumed overbloated popularity, then they need to come to the come to the reality of the fact that Ekiti people voted massively for Oyebanji.
“They must also be reminded the people turned themselves to Jehovah witness in order to have the best candidate as their next governor in person of Oyebanji who they all came out to vote for and the gap between the SDP and our party is over 100,000 votes. Even if you merge the total votes secured by both SDP and PDP our party will still led them by over 40,000.
“So, it’s now a matter of litigation and the electoral process provided for that. And everything can still be seen as a process to enrich our nascent democracy. But I can assure you that our legal team would do a clinical defense of the issues raised in their purported petition”.