The Alliance for Democracy (AD) and its governorship candidate in the 2019 Lagos State gubernatorial election, Chief Owolabi Salis have approached the Supreme Court over the March 9 governorship election in the state.
They described the decisions of the Governorship Election Petition Tribunal and Court of Appeal dismissing his petition against Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s election as “corruption of justice.”
They have therefore approached the Supreme Court seeking the nullification of the victory of Sanwo-Olu, insisting the governor was not elected by majority of lawful votes.
The election petition tribunal had dismissed Salis’ petition for lacking in merit while his appeal filed at the Appellate Court was also resolved against him.
Dissatisfied by both verdicts, the AD candidate approached the Supreme Court in suit number SC:1421/2019 seeking the nullification of Sanwo-olu’s election on various grounds. In the notice of appeal, the AD candidate raised seven issues for determination by the apex court.
He also prayed the court to declare him as the duly elected Governor.
He said the election was marred by many irregularities, vote buying and politicking, adding the result was doctored to reflect zero votes for AD in Ifako Ijaiye Local Government in Lagos.
He said the governor was not elected by majority of valid votes even as he claimed that the voter’s card used by the governor was “cloned.”
Salis said he discovered this when he called for Sanwo-Olu’s forms at INEC and the fact was proven and documented.
Speaking with newsmen on Monday, the AD candidate said, “It is laughable that our so acclaimed law abiding governor elect will use a clone card to vote during election, this and so many other irregularities that we discovered has proved that Babajide Sanwo-Olu is not only fake, he does not deserve the seat he is currently occupying.”
According to Salis, Sanwo-Olu was not qualified to vote in the first place and lying under an oath disqualifies him from even contesting in the election.
“How can he claim he won an election he was not even qualified to contest in?” Salis asked.
“He claimed his voters identification number is BBBB BBBB BB29 5797 059 and INEC said that the voter identification number is non existent because they can’t find it in their data base so who is lying between Sanwo-Olu and INEC?” Salis added.
On the issue with Ifako Ijaiye LG, he said, the LG is an area where AD has numerous strong party loyalists and supporters but claimed that INEC in collaboration with the APC “committed a blatant error by allotting him with zero votes.”
“To further accentuate the need for the total cancellation of the election, the votes recorded for Alliance for Democracy in the entire Ifako Ijaiye Local Government in the Final Results on form EC8B and EC8C is zero, notwithstanding after careful study of the election materials we discovered that votes were recorded in form EC8A in 79 polling units as a total of 136 votes. If these irregularities can be happening in Ifako Ijaiye, God knows how many doctoring has occurred to reduce my votes,” Salis said.
He also claimed that he won the majority of lawful votes.
He added: “Interestingly, Sanwo-Olu and APC did not testify in the tribunal to the allegations that Chief Salis won more of the valid votes and should be declared as the winner and that Sanwo-Olu was not qualified for the election. Sanwo-Olu was subpoenaed by Salis lawyers but refused to appear as respondent. He was supposed to testify but did not testify. If you are a respondent is a case and you failed to testify, then you have conceded in the allegation. In other words, Sanwo-Olu conceded Salis won the majority of the valid votes in the governorship election.
“It is not the intention and freewill of voters in Lagos to be intimidated during any elections and doing so constitute gross misconduct because such act seize the fundamental freedom of the people.”
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