The governor of Lagos State, Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu will know his fate today whether he will remain as the helmsman of the Centre of Excellence, as the state is widely known.
The State Governorship Election Tribunal, SGET, is set to deliver judgment on the petitions filed by the governorship candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, and his counterpart of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Olajide Adediran, popularly known as Jandor.
The two candidates are challenging the election of Governor Sanwoolu.
The petitions of the APM and APP had earlier been dismissed by the Chairman of the three-man Tribunal, Justice Arum Ashom, after the petitioners withdrew them.
The independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had declared Sawoolu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC winner of the March 18 Governorship election.
He was declared winner after polling a total of 762,134 votes, defeating Rhodes-Vivour who scored 312,329 votes, and Adediran aka Jandor who scored 62,449 votes.
The Justice Arum Ashom-led panel had on Saturday informed the litigants that judgment would be delivered on the matter on Monday, September 25.
This was confirmed by Rhode-Vivor, the candidate of the LP in his X post, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.
He posted, “We have just been informed that judgement on our election petition at the tribunal will be delivered on Monday, the 25th of September.”
On August 12, lawyers in the petitions adopted their final written addresses before the tribunal.
In proof of his petition, Rhodes-Vivour had called 10 witnesses including four subpoenaed witnesses, describing his petition as a litmus test for constitutionality in the country.
He asked the tribunal to disqualify SanwoOlu and his running mate Hamzat and return him as the person with the highest number of lawful votes cast during the election.
Jandor on his part had also called for the disqualification of the candidates of Sanwo-olu and Rhodes-Vivour for “non-compliance” with the Electoral Act 2022 and the guidelines of INEC.
The PDP candidate’s main contention against the governor is that he lied about his West Africa Examinations Council, WAEC, he submitted to the INEC for the election.
He insisted that there were differences in the names submitted by the governor and what the WAEC list showed, he asked the tribunal to declare as wasted all votes cast for Sanwo-olu and Rhodes-Vivor.
He should be declared winner of the election, he said in the petition.
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