On Friday, July 5 2019, the Supreme Court in a majority decision of 5 to 2, upheld the election of Gboyega Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the Governor of Osun State at the 2018 Osun State Governorship election. Dismissing an appeal by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Candidate, Ademola Adeleke, the Supreme Court in its lead judgment aligned its decision with that of the Court of Appeal, stating that the absence of Justice Peter Obiorah who delivered the lead judgment of the Election Tribunal, from the proceedings was detrimental to the case of the appellants. This decision brings the number of APC-led States in Nigeria to nineteen out of thirty-six. The minority judgment agreed that the absence of Justice Obiorah would have resulted in the nullification of the Tribunal’s judgment but stated that the only way to affirm the judge’s absence was by producing the original court records, adding that the actual records of the Tribunal were not before the Court of Appeal. One of the dissenting Justices also held that INEC had no cogent reason to declare the election inconclusive and conduct a re-run.
Recall that at the Osun State Governorship election which held on Saturday, 22nd September 2018, the PDP Candidate, Ademola Adeleke was leading the polls before it was declared inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral commission (INEC). A re-run election was conducted on Thursday, 27th. September 2019 in seven polling units across four Local Government Areas of the State, after which Oyetola Gboyega of APC was declared winner of the election. Adeleke challenged Gboyega’s victory at the Osun State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal, where judgment was given in his favour and he was declared winner of the election. In its decision on February 6 2019, the Tribunal nullified the re-run election. It further stated that INEC did not comply with its guidelines in 17 polling units, deducted the number of votes derived in those polling units from the results declared for APC and PDP, arriving at 254,698 votes for PDP and 253,452 votes for APC. Following Governor Oyetola’s appeal of the Tribunal’s judgment, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision of the Osun State Governorship Election Tribunal, nullifying Adeleke’s victory.