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Oluseye Ojo, Ibadan
The Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in Oyo State on Monday upheld the election of Governor Seyi Makinde of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The unanimous judgment of the panel was read by Justice Suraju Muhammadu, who chaired the tribunal. The tribunal also had Justices Musa Bazza and Elizabeth Orji as members.
The 2019 governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Adebayo Adelabu, who is a former deputy governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and his party had filed a petition before the tribunal on March 29, 2019.
INEC returned Makinde as the winner of the keenly-contested election, having scored a total of 515,621 votes. The total number of votes credited to Adelabu was 357,982. The breakdown of the results showed that Makinde won the gubernatorial election in 28 out of the 33 local government areas of the state, while Adelabu won in the remaining five local government areas.
The tribunal, however, awarded a cost of N600,000, against Adelabu and APC, who are the petitioners; they are to pay each of the three respondents the sum of N200,000.
