Mr Opeyemi Duke, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) stalwart and member, PDP Presidential Campaign Organization, has alleged that the senator-elect for Kogi West senatorial district, Otunba Dino Melaye, has gone into hiding to avoid being served court process from the tribunal.
Senator Smart Adeyemi has dragged the Dino Melaye before the National Assembly Petitions Tribunal sitting in Lokoja, the state capital.
“The act of evading service of court process is a well known dubious practice among politicians who lack integrity. While evading service of court process/petition from the petitioner, they have gone behind the doors to get a copy for their lawyers who have started work on his defense but will delay being served to reduce the number days left for the petition to expire”, he said.
“Based on the Electoral Act, election petitions cannot go beyond 180 days, so their delay tactics is a dubious strategy to knock Smart Adeyemi’s petition out on technical grounds that the time for the petition has elapsed. My simple question is, if he truly won the election, why is he adopting such dubious strategy?”
Smart Adeyemi in his petition alleged irregularities in the conduct of the election as well as the result declared by the INEC on March 28, 2015.
In the petition filed by his counsel, Mr J.O. Olatoke, SAN, Adeyemi said that Melaye was not duly elected or returned by the majority of the lawful votes cast during the election adding that he (Adeyemi) should be declared the winner.
The petitioner said he scored the majority of lawful votes cast during the election and ought to have been declared the winner.
According to the petitioner, the declaration of Melaye as winner was wrongful and invalid.
“Melaye was declared the winner of the election because of wrong and/or incorrect computation of lawful votes cast and intentional omission of collating results of the polling units won by the petitioners and counting of spoilt ballots in his favour,” Adeyemi added.
He equally sought an order withdrawing or nullifying the Certificate of Return, CoR, already issued to Melaye as the winner of the election and then directing INEC, which is the third respondent in the petition to issue a fresh CoR to him, as according to him, he scored the highest number of lawful votes cast at the election contrary to the result declared by the INEC.
Opeyemi Duke expressed confidence in the integrity and uprightness of the Judges sitting in the tribunal and assured the good people of Kogi West that the mandate they willingly gave to Smart Adeyemi will be restored very soon.
