As hearing continues at the Kogi Governorship Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja, one issue is crystal clear, even to the blind, is that the current sojourner in Lugard House, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, is a goner.
With godly sincerity, Yahaya Bello has the worst case in the history of governorship petition in Nigeria.
Today, the social media came alive, first, with the pictures of the Chief of Staff, Mr. Edward Onoja dozing uncontrollably during tribunal sitting before he was docked in the witness box. Unfortunate confessions by this star witness left Yahaya Bello supporters gasping for breathe.
Right before our eyes, Edward Onoja admitted, in the witness box, that his oga at the top, Yahaya Bello, is not a registered voter in Kogi state. Edward claimed Yahaya Bello applied to transfer his permanent voters card, PVC, to Kogi state but the application up till now has not been approved. This 11th hour confession is a sharp departure from the bold claims by his associates that he voted in Kogi State during the last elections.
It is worthy to note that the laws guiding our country Nigeria states that:
A person shall be qualified to contest the Presidential, Governorship or National Assembly elections if:
(a) he is ordinarily resident in the constituency in which he intends to contest the election or is an indigene of that constituency;
(b) he is registered as a voter in the Constituency in which he intends to contest the election;
(c) he produces evidence of tax payment as and when due for a period of three consecutive years immediately preceding the year of the election or is exempted therefrom;
And other requirements.
You will recall that you published one of my well-researched article on your platform on 22nd January, 2016 (Incontrovertible Proofs That Yahaya Bello Was Invalidly Nominated for Dec. 5 ‘Supplementary’ Election – Adamu Ojonugwa) . In that piece I argued that Without a running mate, nomination of a Governorship candidate is INVALID. Today, in the witness box, our dear Edward Onoja was shown the form filled by Yahaya Bello, the space required to be filled by the deputy was not filled. That is, Yahaya Bello ran the unfortunate supplementary election without a deputy. Onoja had no choice, he agreed that Yahaya Bello never had a running mate for the controversial December 5 supplementary election.
It will take Judgement crafted outside the laws of the land for Yahaya Bello to survive. Technically, he is out of contention. The highly anticipated tribunal ruling is obviously a race between former Governor Wada and Honourable James Faleke.
The logical conclusion is the declaration of Wada as winner of the badly fought election as the living candidate with the highest number of votes or overrule INEC’s decision that the November 21 was inconclusive and declare Faleke winner. While Yahaya Bello lawyers labour day and night to discover or create a ‘legal lacuna’ that can be capitalised upon to knock out these mighty cases on ‘technical grounds’, it is becoming more and more difficult to achieve that as the counsels to both Wada and Faleke are well experienced in election petitions processes and games.