The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says it is heading to court over to quash what it described as “the illegal declaration of the September 22 Osun governorship election as inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The party is also calling for the arrest and prosecution of the election’s returning officer, Prof Joseph Fuwape whom they accused of succumbing to the pressure of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and “deciding a concluded election as inconclusive.”
The party argued: “Our electoral law is clear that once an election result is declared, INEC is bound to return a winner. INEC, in trying to play the card of the defeated APC, contravened the law by refusing to announce a return, even when the declared results have thrown up a winner.
“Section 69 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended) states that inter-alia “in an election to the office of the President or governor whether or not contested and in any contested election to any other elective office, the result shall be ascertained by counting the votes cast for each candidate and subject to the provisions of sections 133, 134 and 179 of the constitution, the candidate that receives the highest number of votes shall be declared elected by the appropriate Returning Officer.”
“Concurrently, Section 179 (2), (a) (b) of the constitution directly prescribes that “a candidate for an election to the office of Governor of a State shall be deemed to have been duly elected where, there being two or more candidates – (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election; and (b) he has not less than one-quarter of all the votes cast in each of at least two-thirds of all the local government areas in the State
“INEC’s action in declaring a concluded election as inconclusive is therefore an annulment, totally duplicitous, constitutionally illegal, ultra-vires and as such null and void.
The PDP therefore demands the immediate arrest and prosecution of the Osun State Governorship Election Returning Officer, Prof. Joseph Fuwape, for succumbing to the pressure of the APC and declaring a decided election as inconclusive.”
