Comrade Abayomi Arabambi

Adejoke Adeleye/Abeokuta

The Ogun chapter of Labour Party has alleged foul play in the dismissal of its petition against the March 9 gubernatorial election which led to election of Prince Dapo Abiodun of All Progressives Congress, APC as governor by the State Election Petition Tribunal on Friday.

The tribunal had struck out the petition over what it described as lack of diligent prosecution. The Tribunal had also asked the party to pay the sum of #500,000 to the governor as compensatory fine.

But in its reaction to the judgment on Sunday, Labour Party alleged that the judgement was a pure political conspiracy between the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) and the APC.

The party said it has already appealed against the judgement also accused a former governor of the State and a former Senator of being part of the consipracy in a statement that was signed by its State Chairman, Comrade Abayomi Oluwafemi Arabambi and was made available to newsmen in Abeokuta.

The party further noted that its petition was a straight forward one since the complaint was about ommission of its name and logo in the ballot paper used for the March 09 governorship election.

The statement party reads: On 21st day of June 2019 , the power of money was put to play and since it was of the devil a temporary ruling was given against the interest of justice and God. To this end we are more convinced of victory in our pursuit of justice.

“The Labour Party’s petition is straight forward enough:  ‘In the Governorship election , the INEC omitted the name and Logo of Labour Party in the ballot paper and Dapo Abiodun as the considered winner of the election was illegally installed.’

“At the stage of empanelling the members of the Tribunal, a lot of deliberate attempt at playing Russian roulette was openly demonstrated the ” we are in power ” intimidation against the petitioners and the petition.”

“The members of the Tribunal were sent through various jiggling to at last give the justifiable impression that the panel that could be coerced , intimidated or bring to compromise was found. At a point when the Tribunal was  approaching the truth and it became clear to them that their lies are already hunting them, they became wild and started running after our (the petitioner, witnesses and our counsels) lives. The Tribunal was adequately notified in several acknowledged letters of official complaints.

“This later got much worse and far too dangerous along the line which triggered series of acknowledged official letters of security complaints  to the Tribunal , the Appeal Court President and the Inspector General of the Police asking for the transfer of the case out of Ogun State for security reasons .

“The threat to the lives of our witnesses , our counsels including we the Petitioners got so dangerous and physical sometimes.

“In all of these , vehicles without plate numbers were employed in these security threats and attempts at lives got so dangerous that the Tribunal was officially intimidated of the decision of the witnesses not to take their security for granted and are not willing to attend the court if nothing is done about the needful transfer of the case out of Ogun State.

“All of these were known and acknowledged by the Tribunal , yet the predetermined conspiracy that had all the time been in place was activated when the Tribunal was sure that the series of intimidations and threats to lives have conveniently scared the witnesses away to open the way for a ruling that will play out the conspiracy of the political wolves hyenas.

“What they fail to understand is that a right to appeal is alive and it won’t be in Ogun State where an organised crowd of assassins can be free to target the lives of the witnesses, the Counsels and the Petitioners.

“Only a witness who is alive can testify.  We are assuring the public that nothing has changed , the case is alive and has been   Appealed already before the court of appeal in IBADAN.

“The public should be aware that, what some Judicial merchants in politics are trying to do and seemingly with the cooperation of their collaborators in the Judiciary is to make getting justice difficult.

“The Judiciary is practically becoming the accused/ respondent in this case. The core point is that, you can’t beat a petition that is so obvious and glaring which needs little effort to prove, no matter the level of your governmental connections.”