This is excerpts of Olorogun Barrister Kenneth Gbagi’s interview with Arise TV.
Can you tell us the content of your petition that is before the tribunal?
We have filed a petition with the Delta state electron petition tribunal, cataloguing the issues we believe had gone wrong with the entire election. We filed the petition on two major grounds. One is that the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th candidates of that election were hitherto not qualified to run for the election.
So we had approached the court, the tribunal to say, yes they contested the election, but they were not supposed to be candidates for the election. They were not qualified to contest.
On the second leg of our petition, we observed that there was misbehavior during the election. There were acts against the law and the electoral act. If that was the case, our second ground would be disqualify all these four other persons, having violated the electoral law.
Then, let those of us who are qualified, go for the election as contained in the relevant electoral laws.
And I’m quite happy having filed our petitions, they have replied and all their replies seem to have agreed with our petitions.
They were not qualified, the facts are there for anybody to see. So, what we are waiting for, actually and truly is victory from the tribunal as to the effect that the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th candidates were not qualified for the election. Votes were only allocated to them.
Since they were not qualified, they can never be governor of Delta state. That’s my position.
Let’s talk about your party the SDP, because about two weeks ago, there were talks that the SDP dumped your case because the chairman of the party Mr. Oke Idawene, disclosed this. He actually led other leaders of the party to pay a congratulatory visit to the governor-elect, Oborevwori. Your party seems to have left you in the cold at the moment. What do you have to say to that?
Oke Idawene, first and foremost, was not a member of the SDP. He was a mole as he himself has said. As in the last three years he has been working as an agent of the PDP. So, he was never a member of the party.
The party has acted very swiftly by suspending and dismissing him and those co-agents of his who were moles as planted by him.
The thing is, very honest people do not live long except you have the tenacity to fight. So, Oke was never a candidate or a member of the SDP. Oke himself was paid money to take the governorship candidacy of the SDP.
In the last ten years as you know, this uneducated fellow has held the office with purposes of using it as a trade tool with government in power to make little money for himself, but he has been dismissed.
He went further very dubiously to appoint one of his cronies as a lawyer, who filed a petition for withdrawal of our petition. And as you know, the lawyer himself has run away with those papers from court. His petition has been dismissed.
Illegality has become the order of the day for criminals but were you to have your facts and pursue them, the end of it will be good news.
That lawyer has been thrown out. Oke himself is on the run, he has been dismissed and with his cohorts having been discovered to be a mole and he said in the last three years he was not a member.
SDP has got new executives in Delta state. He has no right under the laws to have appointed a lawyer in the first place, but criminals will always attempt but that to me is history now. He has no place in the history of SDP.
SDP never dumped me. You saw the letter of the national chairman and the national secretary of the party. We are all intact and our petition is running its course.
Now, you have made it clear that the focus of your petition is the individuals, they do not qualify to contest the election. Now, how have the events that have played out regarding the Delta state elections shaped your perception of INEC?
Put it this way, I’m extremely pleased with INEC. If you saw the response of INEC, it had agreed that one, there were incursions against the electoral act that they did not transmit the electoral results from ward collation levels to local governments levels and to the state.
By that particular acceptance and act they have agreed that the election did not meet the electoral laws and guidelines for that election.
What are the various options?
That’s why I have prayer two(2)
INEC haven agreed, that of course leveled the case of the PDP candidate, of course he had nothing to stand on.
INEC itself that is the umpire of the election says “yes, we acted against the electoral act. We did not transmit the results.
If that’s the case, one of the second prayer that we have other than the fact that they are not qualified is that if you go on a relay race, and you have been found to have taken dope, if you have ten people in the race, one to seven of them have taken dope, and they have come in that order as winners, the eighth person who did not take dope and has done the relay race by himself, is declared the winner.
So in this case, two things INEC has said. One, we committed an infraction, we conducted an election outside the electoral act by not transmitting the results. And two, in their reply, they said that I ought not to have sued.
I would have thought that INEC would have read the electoral act very well. Section 133 sub section 2 of the electoral act says you are permitted to sue as much as ten (10) candidates you believe have incursions and not qualified.
So to that extent, INEC has helped our case very well. I am happy with their reply to the tribunal and to that effect, the tribunal is free now to decide precisely who qualified and who does not qualify. And if you did not qualify, you can not therefore be declared the governor of the state. That is our position.
In any case, should the tribunal decide otherwise, they would disqualify PDP, APC, APGA and Labour Party having presented candidates that ab-initio are not qualified to have conducted the election. And what will be left, it would be left with just SDP as the major party to go back for a re-election. To that extent I’m very happy.
Very happy you said, but as it stands right now, barring any other decision from the courts, we’re going to be having Sherriff Oborevwori inaugurated as the governor of Delta state. Will that deter you in any way or the fight continues?
I’m a lawyer, swearing anybody in doesn’t make any difference. It will not deter me, it has nothing to do with where we are headed. It is definite because the laws are very simple and clear to the common layman on the street.
