2023: Court sacks Amosun’s anointed candidate, Otegbeye, 26 ADC assembly hopefuls

The Federal High Court in Abeokuta has sacked the governorship candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in Ogun State, Biyi Otegbeye, and the 26 state assembly candidates of the party.

The judge, Akintayo Aluko, delivered the judgement in a suit filed by the Labour Party accusing the ADC of non-compliance with the Electoral Act in the conduct of the primaries.

Mr Aluko held that the primary elections were not monitored by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Mr Otegbeye is the anointed candidate of the immediate past governor of the state, Ibikunle Amosun. Mr Amosun is the sitting senator representing Ogun Central district. Although he is seeking reelection under the ruling All Progressives Congress, he is backing Mr Otegbeye of the ADC to thwart the reelection of Governor Dapo Abiodun.

The court ordered INEC to remove the names of Mr Otegbeye and the 26 legislative candidates from the list of candidates cleared for next year’s elections.

However, the counsel to the 2nd and 3rd defendants (ADC and all the candidates),
Tunde Falola, said they would study details of the judgement and proceed to the court of appeal.

“The court has given judgement in its own wisdom and it is favour of the plaintiff. As you know, this is a contest, one way or the other it has to go the way it goes, but that is not the end of the case, we have applied and we have indicated to the court that we are very interested in having access to the judgement as quick as possible with the view to sit down and analyse the judgement with the view of taking further steps in respect of the judgement.

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“Constitutionally, every Nigerian, every party before the court whose judgement has been given against has the right, constitutional right to approach the higher court and ventilate his or her grievances. There are some areas which we feel we disagree with judgement of his lordship, that we intend to explore before the court of appeal.

“There are some areas which we feel that the positions of the lordship do not accord with the position of law, that is what we intended to explore.”

The LP Legal Counsel, Monday Mawah, described the judgement as welcome development.

“Simply put, what transpired in court today is victory for rule of law and democracy. We brought an action to the court challenging the decision of INEC to countenance the list of candidates that purportedly emerged in primaries that never took place by the ADC,” he said..

“The court agreed with us and said in the eye of the law there was no primary since there was no primary any name purportedly put on that list for ADC should be removed.”

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