Arrival of judgment day in Ekiti

By Bolu Oyinyioye

Segun Oni and Kayode Fayemi EVERY mortal fears and dreads the judgment day. Right from the time the holy books were written, that fear has always lurked in the heart of man, especially with the picture of heaven and hell carefully pasted on the walls of the mind in a sharp juxtaposition.

Unlike God’s judgment, which we are yet to see, judgments are daily delivered from man to man, in different climes, in different languages and in different ways. For both the judgment of God and that which man gives, fear and anxiety are almost normal. This is because you never can tell 100 per cent what the contents of the judgment would be.

While God’s judgment is expected to come after death, man’s judgment over man is handed down live! But both share one common feature: Uncertainty. As the Bible tells us, all our righteousness is like a filthy rag in the eyes of God, the ultimate judge. So, every man will be judged, not because he is entirely righteous, but by the grace of the Almighty. What that means is that you are never so sure of making heaven until that judgment day, which comes only after this world has come to an end. On that day, all the dead will rise to join the pool of the living in the court of God, the creator of heaven and earth. I imagine how we will all wait before the throne for the verdict which, from time immemorial, has been immersed in mystery.

But behind that mystery is a clue. You can actually tell where you are going —heaven or hell — even right here on this planet. The righteous, according to the Bible, will see Christ before death. Luke 2: 25 — 26.

As we all know, the judge’s decision, under normal condition, is never known by any of the parties before the court. But in most cases, when you have a very good case and that case is very well presented, you are almost sure of victory, even if the judges don’t like your face or race.

The position of the counsel to the Governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Segun Oni, in the petition filed by Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Oni’s Action Congress (AC) opponent in the last election, is one which from the mere reading of it speaks volumes.

The petitioner was said to have listed 77 witnesses. He himself testified as PW76. But throughout the entire period, the petitioner called only 19 of his polling agents during the election and only four persons who were described as voters during the election. The rest were either party leaders or monitoring agents who had no business at the polling units on the day of the election. In effect, the petitioner expects the tribunal to cancel the election in over 1,500 polling units based on the evidence of four voters who were allegedly disenfranchised.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Dr. Fayemi called ten electoral officers as his witnesses. The electoral officers, who were testifying for the petitioner, were unanimous in their evidence that the election was free and fair. The position of the law is that where the evidence of a party contradicts its case or that of his other witnesses, no court can pick or choose which set of evidence or witness to believe on behalf of that party.

Even the tribunal in Ondo State, which nullified the election of Dr. Olusegun Agagu as the state governor, recognised this point when it held that the petitioner in that case presented contradictory evidence in respect of a particular local government and, therefore, refused to pick and choose for the said petitioner which set of evidence to believe.

The petitioner placed much reliance on the testimony of his expert witnesses, including Mr. Adrian Forty, a British forensic expert. However, Mr. Forty did not examine a single original ballot paper, according to the lawyers. He only examined cropped images of the ballot papers. Of crucial importance is the admission of Mr. Forty that the process of cropping could be used to manipulate the images sent to him for examination. He also admitted that the 50 experts engaged by him to carry out the examination all used their eyes to examine the images. In other words, the said 50 experts employed visual examination. The position of the counsel to Oni is that in legal parlance, this revelation shows that Mr. Forty’s account of what others perceived through the use of their own senses is hearsay.

The final nail in the coffin of the case of the petitioner would seem to have been hammered in by the petitioner himself during cross examination. The petitioner had tendered a document (Report of Europen Union (EU) Monitors) on the election in his bid to show that Governor Oni and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) perpetrated the violence on the day of the election.

The petitioner obviously did not study the document properly before putting it in evidence. He was made to read aloud in open court a portion of the report which stated that it was he (the petitioner) along with his supporters that fomented trouble on the election day.

In defense of the petition, the first respondent called a total of 56 witnesses, while the second to 16th respondents called 12 witnesses. In contrast to the witnesses called by the petitioner, most of the witnesses called by the first respondent were polling agents and registered voters. In addition, the first respondent also called some of the persons alleged in the petition to have perpetrated acts of violence who all denied the allegations made against them. All voters called by the first respondent tendered their voter’s cards.

Besides, the first respondent called an expert witness, Mr. John Lazarretto, another forensic expert from the United States, who gave evidence that most of the thumb prints contained on the ballot papers on which the petitioner’s expert witness, Mr. Forty, based his report did not have any forensic identification value. This was said to be so for the simple reason that the thumbprints or fingerprints on the ballot papers were not made in a controlled environment for the purpose of fingerprint analysis. Thus, in most cases, the prints could not be examined due to the fact that too little or too much ink had been applied on the thumb of the voter, thereby considerably reducing the forensic value of the resultant print.

The first respondent, Oni, himself testified. He was not shaken during cross-examination by counsel to the petitioner. What is more, he effectively stated under cross-examination that the persons named as having perpetrated crime during the election were not part of his campaign organisation.

The various addresses dwelt on the position of the law on the nature of the petitioner’s claim. On the whole, the petitioner appeared to have failed to discharge the burden placed on him by virtue of his own pleading. In law, a petitioner is expected to succeed on the strength of his case and not on any perceived weakness of the defence. He called only 19 polling agents and four doubtful voters and expected the tribunal to make a finding that election did not hold in most of the units making up the wards in all the disputed local government areas.

As Oni succinctly put it in an interview read on the Internet about 48 hours ago, no matter how benevolent your examiner is, you cannot get a pass mark for answering two or three questions out of 10. The emphasis here is on the number of questions attempted. Whether the answers given to those questions are correct or wrong is an issue which those of us laymen are not competent to determine.

What remains incontrovertible is that two or three over 10 is failure anywhere in the world. And except the examiner decides to write more answers himself in a bid to help this particular student, the result is obvious.

As Oni’s chief image maker, Moses Jolayemi, said the high expectation of Ekiti State people explains why they all seem to have ironed their party attires, only waiting for the pronouncement to be made before rolling out the drums. And that is about 24 hours away.

•Dr. Oyinyioye, an aeronautic engineer, lives in Wisconsin, USA.