With a little over one year to the end of his second term as Ogun State governor, the legal challenge on the election of Gbenga Daniel finally ended on Monday when the Court of Appeal sitting in Ibadan, Oyo State nullified the suit brought by the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) candidate in the April 14, 2007 governorship election, Ibikunle Amosun.
In an unanimous judgment which lasted for 65 minutes, the five-member justices led by Mohammed Garba affirmed that the governor was validly elected in the 2007 poll and affirmed the verdict of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which gave Daniel victory.
This was sequel to the appeal court’s affirmation of the judgment of the lower tribunal which had on two occasions either dismissed Amosun’s appeal or declared that his petition lacked merit and could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
All the four grounds of relief sought by Amosun to be declared winner of the election failed as the justices agreed with the lead judgment that allegations of electoral irregularities were not proved beyond reasonable doubt.
The justices held that the onus and burden of proof rested squarely on the appellant while agreeing with lower tribunal’s position that Amosun actually abandoned some reliefs contained in his petition as argued by Daniel’s counsel, Taiwo Osipitan, a professor and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) as well as other counsels.
According to the judgment, the lower tribunal is correct in law when it resolved all the matters canvassed for by Amosun against him because “a petitioner cannot dump his evidence before the tribunal and expect the tribunal to look for the evidence for him.”
In declaring that the appellant did not discharge the burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt, the court held that the tribunal was not in error in dismissing the petition, saying that all the 40 witnesses called by the appellant could not substantiate the claims that the election was characterised by violence, over-voting, irregularities, ballot-stuffing and ballot snatching among others.
The court maintained that all the allegations are criminal in nature and must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, saying that “the big lacuna in the appellant’s case is his failure to show where results had been inflated such that it can be deducted and then the substantive votes be added to arrive at the overall winner.”
In her submission, Justice H.M. Ogunwumiju noted: “I need not look at his face to know that he is not an expert because I have read through the proceedings of the lower tribunal and know that the expert is not a credible expert going by the evidences he led’’