1 month ago
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By Titus Akhigbe
The election petition tribunal in the September 21, 2024 Edo State governorship election has ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to release all the electoral materials used at the election for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate for the purpose of inspection.
The chairman of the tribunal, Justice W.I. Kpochi granted the order in an exparte motion filed by the candidate of the party,Dr. Asue Ighodalo and the party.
The exparte motion with suit number EPT/ED/GOV/01M/2024 and dated September 27, 2024 was filed by Rotimi.O. Ogunseso, SAN with Seun Olusuyi counsel to the applicants.
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The petition and affidavits was sworn to by Osasere Adagbonyin.
In the petition all the prayers of the petitioners were granted by the tribunal.
The Certified True Copy of the order signed by the secretary of the tribunal Mauzu Ibrahim Bagudu and made available to newsmen in Benin City ordered INEC to produce and make available all the materials used for the election before the pre-hearing session.
In the petition, the applicants had prayed the court to order INEC to produce and handover to it the comprehensive list of all the Electoral materials available in its custody for inspections.
The documents listed by the applicants and granted by the tribunal are all forms EC8A, forms EC8B, forms EC8C, forms EC8D, forms EC8E, forms EC25B, forms EC25B(i) used at the election.
Also granted are all forms EC40A, forms EC40C, forms EC40G and EC40G(i) used at the gubernatorial election
The court also ordered INEC to make all the polling unit Results, Forms EC8A uploaded to its IREV portal from the poling unit, list of accredited agents of all the political parties that participated in the gubernatorial election.
Other are voters register for cach of the polling units, total number of BVAS machines deployed to the poling units, serial number of each BVAS machines matched against
the specific polling units and statement/report of the number of accredited Voters recorded on and extracted directly from the
BVAS machines used at all the polling units for the election.
The tribunal further ordered INEC to produce and make available to the applicants record/list of polling units where election results were not uploaded to INEC IREV portal as at 22nd September, 2024 when the result of the election and return of winners were announced.
It also directed that record of the posting of INEC adhoc staff for the 4519 polling units, number of Permanent Voters Cards, PVCs collected in each polling unit should be made available to the applicants.
Meanwhile, PDP has served the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the certified true copy of the tribunal’s order.
Speaking to newsmen, shortly after serving the the order in the Benin Headquarters of the commission,
Olusegun Jolaawo, SAN, said the service was in furtherance of the applicants’ attempt to get the electoral materials for the purpose of inspection.
According to him, we came here today in furtherance of our attempt to get materials to fresh up our petition in further to a court order we received on September 29, 2024.
“Now when we get here today we were not able to get audience with the REC but we were able to see the head of legal who told us that they were preparing a schedule for our inspection.
“But we have not been able to have access to BVAS for inspection.We are now told that whenever a schedule is ready, we would be contacted by INEC which is not able to do today.
“The risk involved is obvious to everybody, and the time expires on Saturday for us to file our petition and today is Monday”,he said.
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