DELTA GUBER: OKOWA IS RESPONSIBLE FOR CASES OF OVER VOTING-OGBORU

The Labour Party (LP) and its gubernatorial candidate in the April 11, 2015 governorship election, Delta state, Chief Great Ogboru yesterday closed his case at the resumed hearing of the Delta state governorship election petition tribunal sitting in Asaba, saying that they have established cases of over voting.

The Labour Party (LP) and its gubernatorial candidates in the just concluded governorship election, Chief Great Ogboru is challenging the election victory of Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa at the polls.

Closing his case yesterday (Wednesday) after calling his last two witnesses, Mr Tuner Ogboru and Mr. Efe Duku, the led counsel to the petitioner Mr. Dele Adesina (SAN) noted that after calling 16 witnesses they are very sure that justice will be done in this case.

Addressing newsmen outside the tribunal, cancel to Chief Great Ogboru, Mr. Dele Adesina (SAN) stated that: “We are very confidence that justice will be done on this matter because we believe we have put our facts across to the tribunal. Our case we very simple, the petitioner case is that there was over voting in the governorship election of April 11^th 2015 in Delta state”.

“There were also cases of non compliance of principle of the electoral act, the manual and approved guidelines and this no0n compliance substantially affected the result of the election”.

“We have pushed in the voters’ register and the list of total number of accredited voters in Delta state; we have also put in the result of that election which in any event has been admitted by the respondents so the task is very simple, you compel the result received and the numbers of the accredited voters”.

“It has been established that there were over voting, in other words people voted without due accreditation and the law says, such polling units where such irregularities occurred, the result of the election there should be nullified”.

“If the tribunal finds as a fact as the petitioner has tried to do, indeed that there where over voting in those enumerated polling units, the election in those polling units stands to be canceled because the law says those elections are null and void”.

“So far we have called 16 witnesses in this case including INEC officials who came to tender very sensitive documents at the tribunal and all the witnesses have put in their best”.

It would be recalled that during the testimony of two INEC officials – Assistant Director, ICT Department from Abuja headquarters; they said that “all documents tendered were duly certified by INEC, that the card reader has three (3) functions to with; identification of voters, verification of PVC holder and voter’s authentication on Election Day.”

The stated further that “the card readers recorded no sustained failure during the governorship election in Delta State and accredited numbers of voters as at April 29th was 709,000 and at the expiration of the shutting down of data upload, the final tally was 715,393.”

But on April 13, Delta State INEC had put the figure of accredited voters at 1,017,796, exceeding actual accreditation number revealed by the admitted report obtained from INEC central server.

However, announcing Senator Okowa as the winner of the election on April 13, the Returning Officer, Bio Nyananyo, said the PDP candidate polled 724,680 votes, which translated to 14,980 votes higher than actual number of accredited voters.