Abiodun v Akinlade: Final judgment today

The Court of Appeal sitting in Ibadan, Oyo State will today give the final verdict in the governorship dispute between Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and his challenger, Adekunle Akinlade of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM).

At the last hearing of the case, the Appeal court had said it would communicate the judgement day to the parties.

Akinlade appealed the Sept. 4 judgment of the Election Petition Tribunal in Abeokuta that upheld the victory of Abiodun as the Ogun State governor.

Other respondents in the appeal are the APC and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The five man panel of the appeal court Presided over by Justice Abubakar Yahaya reserved judgment after listening to the argument of all the parties.

Earlier, the lead Counsel to APM, Mr Sebastine Hon (SAN), said Abiodun submitted a false academic qualification to aid his qualification to contest the 2019 governorship election.

Hon contended that there was a difference between what he wrote in the form CFO submitted in 2015 to contest the Senatorial election and the one submitted in 2019 for governorship election.

He said Abiodun was not qualified to contest the governorship election based on his false qualification and urged the court to uphold the appeal.

In his argument, Abiodun’s counsel, Mr Taiwo Osipitan (SAN), said his client was qualified to contest the governorship election.

Osipitan said the issue of academic qualification was a pre-election matter which ought to have been brought to court within 14 days after the document was submitted.

He said that the appellants did not have any grounds of appeal and urged the court to dismiss the it.

The tribunal sitting in Abeokuta, the state capital, had dismissed Akinlade’s petition challenging the victory of the governor, as lacking in merit.