A petitioner witness, Dada Moses Bamidele, was on Thursday at the Ekiti State Election Petition Tribunal confronted with evidence of the presentation of a certificate that does not belong to the Deputy Governor-elect, Mrs. Monisade Afuye.
Lawyers to the Governor-elect, Biodun Oyebanji, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) tackled Bamidele by putting it to him that the Candidate’s Number on the WAEC Result which he (Bamidele) attached to the petition of Chief Segun Oni to give evidence against the Deputy Governor-elect did not belong to Mrs. Afuye.
The witness admitted errors, discrepancies, and inaccuracies in the documents he submitted to the Tribunal which he relied on to give evidence before the three-member Panel.
Counsel to Oyebanji and Mrs. Afuye, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) and counsel to APC, Chief Akin Olujinmi (SAN), put it to the witness that “one digit was missing” in the copy of WAEC Certificate the petitioners filed along with their petition.
Under cross-examination by the two lawyers, Bamidele was compelled to read the conflicting Candidate’s Numbers on the copy of the certificate the Petitioners used in filing their petition and the actual certificate belonging to the Deputy Governor-elect.
Bamidele admitted under cross-examination by Fagbemi that he had never worked in WAEC before and further agreed with the counsel that WAEC is the examination body responsible for the conduct of ‘O’ Level and ‘A’ Level certificate examinations.
The witness told the Tribunal also under cross-examination that he finished secondary school in 1978 when he sat for his own WAEC school certificate examination.
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The witness who had earlier been led in examination-in-chief by a counsel in Oni’s legal team, Mr. Owoseni Ajayi tendered documents that were marked as Exhibits A9, A10, A11, and A12.
But the lawyers to the Respondents discovered in Exhibit A4, which was a letter written to WAEC by Owoseni Ajayi, that the purported Candidate’s Number of Mrs. Afuye submitted for the purpose of the inquiry was 1822511, the actual Certificate Number of Mrs. Afuye (then known in 1978 when she sat for the exam as Miss Adegboye) was 18225111.
Fagbemi who availed Bamidele with Exhibit A16, the actual WAEC Certificate belonging to Mrs. Afuye, asked the witness to read to the hearing of the Tribunal Panel members the Certificate Number which he (Bamidele) gave under cross-examination as 1822111.
Fagbemi put it to the witness that one digit of Figure “1” was missing from the WAEC Certificate the petitioners credited to Mrs. Afuye, with Ajayi urging the Tribunal to protect the witness from Respondent’s counsel.
At this stage, Fagbemi insisted and put it again to the witness and asked him to look at Exhibit A4 and confirmed to the Tribunal that Mrs. Afuye’s Candidate’s Number ends with “Triple 1” with Petitioners counsel Ajayi interjecting again.
As the atmosphere became charged, Fagbemi contended that he did not want a situation in which such an omission could do damage to his client’s case urging the Panel to take judicial notice of it alleging that the petitioners deliberately wanted to embarrass his client by attributing to her a Candidate’s Number that does not belong to her in the pursuit of their petition.