In front of the Ogun State Election Petition Tribunal on Thursday, forensic examiner and former deputy superintendent of police Reginald Nwoze presented 150,656 ballots that were used in the state’s March 18 governorship election.
Nwoze revealed to the tribunal that he looked over and analysed the ballots from 12 of the state’s local government areas during his cross-examination by the respondents’ attorneys.
In a petition with the file number EPT/OG/GOV/03/2023, the Peoples Democratic Party and its candidate in the state, Ladi Adebutu, contest the election results of Dapo Abiodun, who was declared the winner of the March 18 governorship race by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
He informed the tribunal that the INEC was the source of the ballots submitted.
Nwoze analysed the ballots and noted that 109,785 had regular thumbprints, 3,470 had multiple thumbprints, and 37,401 had multiple thumbprints and smudged thumbprints.
Nwoze claimed, while presenting his evidence to the court, that some of the ballots on which votes for the APC were cast had been marked with markers rather than thumb prints.
The tribunal accepted 150,656 ballots from the state’s election as evidence. They also accepted a piece of video evidence submitted by Sunkanmi Oyejide, a prominent PDP witness. The PDP and Adebutu’s petition was supported by the documents, which were admitted as evidence.
In their respective submissions, the attorneys for INEC, Remi Olatubora, and Abiodun and Onyechi Ikpeazu of the APC, Prof. Taiwo Osipitan, argued against the admission of the video evidence.
The video recording was “completely inadmissible,” according to Olatubora.
In their various submissions, Osipitan and Ikpeazu also rejected the clip’s admissibility, labelling it as “hearsay.”
