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Nigeria: Ondo Tribunal Ambushed Us, Says Olafeso

Omololu Ogunmade

27 August 2008

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interview

Lagos — Almost a month after the election petitions tribunal sitting in Akure, Ondo State capital delivered judgement on the petition filed by the governorship candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, the ruling party, PDP, is yet to recover from the shocks of the judgment.

The state commissioner for Information, Chief Eddy Olafeso, speaks to Omololu Ogunmade on the alleged compromise on the part of the tribunal. Excerpts

Ondo State is not the only state where a tribunal had delivered judgment over election petitions in the country. But the interest in Ondo's judgement was alarming. Why?

The Ondo State's tribunal presented itself in a manner that no other tribunal in the country did. You must have been following the events of the last 14 months, somehow. The judgment was a complete turn around and a complete embarrassment. The Nabaruma-led tribunal, came up with submissions that must have actually angered the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) people. And let me emphasize something that it is the leadership of that party in Ondo State that is still allowing peace to reign.

In a state where you have the majority, and five men walked in and suddenly turned justice on its head, people are bound to show anger. Since the tribunal judgement, several of our people have marched onto Akure to demand that they (the tribunal) return their votes. Let's look at the characteristics and the highlights of the judgment.

Nabaruma disenfranchised over 50 per cent of Ondo State voters as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on April 14, 2007. Nabaruma cancelled over 63 per cent of PDP's votes and selectively whisked those votes away to allow the Labour Party win the 25 per cent of the two-third of the total local governments in the state.

That was not enough. The man went ahead and gave judgment considering less than half of the people that voted during that election, canceling election in over 10 local governments. One was already cancelled by INEC and still went ahead to award the April 14 election to some people. It became curious to know that a tribunal that sat should be an unbiased umpire, which should listen to everybody. But this is what we found:We discovered that the man (Nabaruma) actually turned himself into an investigator. And then suddenly, we found out that all the mathematics he came up with, nobody knew how he did it, except for himself and four other members of the tribunal. It was not to the knowledge of the PDP.

Ordinarily, if votes were to be cancelled in each of the local governments, there must be evidences to prove that something untoward happened during the election. Most of the Labour Party's petitions to the tribunals were hinged on criminal violence and allegations that Police or the Armed Forces and Navy were used to scare people away during the election. Despite the fact that INEC conducted the election, it was only in Ondo State, you can correct me, if I am wrong, that the tribunal disallowed INEC to have a word about the conduct of the election.

How can you say that in an election that was conducted by INEC, the electoral umpire could not have a say in what it saw and did that day. They refused and when we raised objections to all these things, they said, 'don't worry, you 'll have the opportunity when you are making your own submission on these matters.' And curiously, when he was giving his judgement, Nabaruma did not make any reference to all these submissions by the lawyers of Dr. Olusegun Agagu and the PDP and many more.

These were the reasons we saw that people were really, really angry. But thank God for the leadership of the party, which said 'no, we must pursue this through legal means instead of resulting to violence and people must learn how to take things with calm and not to result to violence that happened in Ondo State in 1983.' That is the reason you still have peace reigning in Ondo State now. What happened was an extremity of sitting justice on its head.

Why didn't you come up with these allegations before the judgement was delivered? In the case of Osun for instance, petitioners had always been alleging that the tribunal denied them the required attention?

You see, PDP could not have been the journalists at the tribunal. We kept on calling press conferences. Our lawyers also did so and these things are on record at the tribunal. And by the time you see our grounds of appeal, you 'll be able to see all these things. By the time I finish this interview, I 'll be able to give you copies to be able to look through. It was at the point of raising objections at the tribunal that the tribunal chairman said, 'don't worry, when you are addressing the tribunal, you 'll be able to itemize this.' It was itemized. But none of them was ever referred to as at the time he was giving the judgment. Outside this, we had consistently been worried about the way and manner the man handled every of the witnesses called. If you look at the judgement, you 'll be so surprised that in areas where Rahman Mimiko did not even ask for anything, he was awarded such things. They said the court was not a father Christmas that would just go ahead to award whatever largesse to people. These are some of the worries that we had and we kept on expressing them every time.

So, there was a clear distinction between what happened in Osun State and what happened in Ondo State. Ordinarily, under normal circumstances, who would have imagined all this. And if you look at our lawyers' submissions at the tribunal, every of the issues and objections were itemized. So, we were thinking that if this man is going to deliver his judgment, it would be on the basis of the written address to the tribunal. But he never used any of the evidences. He never used any of the materials presented to them. He never used any of the witnesses that came to corroborate our addresses.

Somebody alleged criminal offences. INEC was not allowed to make any comment. It was on air that INEC was not allowed. The Police and the Army that were said to have helped the PDP win the election, were not allowed one day, to say anything. They said, 'come up with your written statement.' Everybody believed that the judiciary must have grown beyond this kind of behaviour and I still hold the opinion that but for the Nabaruma's blackspot, we still believe in the judiciary. We 've mentioned it several times that it is the only hope of the ordinary man on the street and this nascent democracy. So, it couldn't have been an issue where you begin to matchete one another. You have to allow an issue like this to take its course, knowing fully well that you still have a recourse at the Appeal Court.

The tribunal was not the final arbiter in this matter. The Appeal Court is there and I believe that the maturity and the level of painstaking efforts at the Appeal Court will be able to address these inconsistencies in the judgement.

Are you now saying that the tribunal was compromised?

I smell rats heavily. It's only when a tribunal is compromised that you begin to award what somebody did not ask for. A place where the Labour Party did not even say anything went wrong, they went there and dished out something. And when they were doing their computation, if you look the tables that Nabaruma presented (I think we are going to give you one of the tables before you leave), Nabaruma would give to Labour 7,000 votes unexplained, unsolicited and try and remove from the PDP as much as possible to enable Labour win 25 per cent in two-thirds of the local governments. You could see in the 11 local governments where we had selective cancellations, that they were all areas where the PDP won. And the areas where Labour won were those areas left intact by the tribunal.

I said it in one occasion that if Rahman Mimiko were asked to write such judgment, he would be very careful because he would have done a better job than Nabaruma did by ensuring that he gave Okitipupa local government to Dr. Olusegun Agagu who has been in politics for over 10 years now.

When he ran as the deputy governorship's candidate on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1991, the man won all the votes in Okitipupa and its surroundings for SDP. In 1999, the only four local governments won by the PDP in the whole of the South-west, were in the southern senatorial district of Ondo State where Dr. Olusegun Agagu comes from. He won over 58, 000 votes.

In 2003, he won over 58, 000 votes too and now in 2007, Nabaruma decided to cut over 38,000 votes of the people of Okitipupa Local Government and also in adjoining local governments to Okitipupa such as Ilaje Ese Odo, Irele local governments and that of Odigbo. It was curious that election was held the same day, inside the same ballot box by the same INEC in the presence of everybody available in Ode Irele and the House of Assembly member whose election was held same day with Dr. Olusegun Agagu, was returned as having won the majority of the votes that day. So also in Odigbo local government and we suddenly came to a situation where the governorship election was cancelled for no reason whatsoever adduced in the judgement or at best, known in the hearts of the judges.

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