Appeal Court nullifies Oyo Rep’s election

The Osun State Police Command has intercepted 30,000 copies of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Form EC40A ballot papers being conveyed into Osogbo, the state capital on Wednesday night.

As early as 7.00am. yesterday, many Action Congress (AC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftains had converged on the Okefia Area Command in Osogbo, where the bus carrying the forms was detained. The four young men accompanying the electoral materials were being interrrogated by the police.

Controversy has been trailing the reasons why the forms were being conveyed at odd hours without any police escort, and in a commercial bus with registration XD 214 GNN.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mr. Vincent Okodua, tried to verify the genuineness of the source of the materials, as claimed by the four men.The men told the police that they were sent to the INEC office in Osogbo by an Abuja-based contractor.

The AC refused to believe the account which its chieftains led by the Chairman, Alhaji Moshood Adeoti, described as a cock-and-bull story.

The police showed the waybill prepared by the company, Jike International Investment Limited, 7, Udo Udoma Street, Asokoro, Abuja, dated October 22, 2009, for convenying the forms.

The waybill was addressed to the commission’s zonal office in Osogbo.

The AC, in a letter entitled: "Report of Complicity in Osun State Election Petition Matter", has written the INEC headquarters in Abuja to intimate it with the development.

The letter signed by the party’s state Secretary, Gboyega Famodun, queried why the materials intercepted by the police were being transported in a commercial bus rather than INEC’s official vehicles. He also queried such materials were moved without a police escort.

"Our curiosity arose from the fact that when there is no bye-election or real election coming up in Osun State at this material time, why will INEC be transfering such a large and such sensitive material to the state at this time?

"Since our party, the petitioner, is about closing our case at the election petition tribunal after two long tortuous years of diligent prosecution, we wonder what INEC intended to do with these now if not to favour the PDP in its defence.

"We are, therefore, by this letter requesting an open explanation on the reason behind this suspicious movement of sensitive election materials and an assurance that these materials and similar ones that might have been brought in unnoticed in the past few weeks are not being moved for use in aid of their defence which is just about to commence," the AC said.

But the PDP spokesman, Mr. Deolu Adeyemo said," Ac is "is only raising a false alarm and crying wolf where there is none."