Osun Petition Tribunal: PDP Replies APC, Oyetola

Osun State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) yesterday filed its reply to the petition of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and Governor Adegboyega Oyelola as required by the rules of the election petition Tribunal.

The party maintained that, “it is fully prepared to defend its mandate to show to all and sundry that the election petition filed by the APC and governor Oyelola is time wasting because it was brought in dead and you will see at the end of the day.”

Secretary of the legal committee of the party, Hasim Abioye, who, in company with some party chieftains and witnesses stormed the Osun state High Court venue of the tribunal, said PDP is set to file her own reply to the petition of the APC and governor Oyelola as required by the rules. He added that witnesses must be present physically before the secretary to the Tribunal to sign their witness statements on oath.

Abioye said: “All these people here are witnesses and they have come to show themselves before the secretary that they are ready to sign their witness statement on oath.”

“We have twenty-one days ultimate to file our reply but this is the fourteenth day and to show that we are ever ready as fit as a fiddle, we are ever ready as a boy scout to tell you that we are not running anywhere.’

“I think, we have more than hundred as you can see here and others are still coming so I can tell you that for us to be able to line up and with others still coming we are fully prepared to defend this mandate to show to you that the election petition filed by the APC and governor Oyetola is time wasting because it was brought in dead and you will see at the end of the day.”

“When you see the processes you can approach the Tribunal to see the list of the lawyers on the processes when they are eventually made available to the public but, I can tell you that we are confident of victory and like I always say, the petition is time wasting and in fact it is an empty shell.

“Yes, we are confident that the Tribunal will do justice to this. You know they’ve made so much hypes about service on the governor elect, you know the security situation in Ede and so if we are in the state aftermath the election you can see security britches here and there, so, the administration that has not been able to secure the state properly we cannot just open the gate of the governor elect for just anybody to walk in and that is why the law has made provision for substituted service.

“It is part of our jurisprudence and if there’s no provision for it in our jurisprudence,we say that is not normal. I’ve never seen any election petition where the petitioner has been able to serve the governor elect personally,” he submitted.