Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in Ondo State, Olusola Oke, has lambasted Governor Olusegun Mimiko over the revelation by the Police Special Investigation Unit that the governor presented a forged State Security Service (SSS) report to the Elections Petitions Tribunal and the Appeal Court to secure victory in 2009.
He described the action as a ‘civilian coup’.
Oke was reacting to the publication in some national dailies, of the verbatim Police and SSS report of the investigation
In a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Kunle Adebayo, the former National Legal Adviser of the PDP said the revelation, though coming belatedly, has exposed to all Nigerians the perfidy, corruption and insincerity that characterise Mimiko’s politics.
The police investigation was specially commissioned by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, following a petition to him by former Governor Olusegun Agagu.
According to the statement: “The startling revelation has further reinforced our insistence that Olusegun Mimiko never won both the 2007 and 2012 election, but merely procured victory through dubious manipulations, corruption and illegal alliance with unscrupulous partners’’
Adebayo said just as the allegations of serial rigging and scientific manipulation and illegal injection of over 164,000 names into the Ondo State 2012 voters register hang on the neck of Mimiko in the last election, the current revelation has also made it clear to all Nigerians that Mimiko ought not to be governor of Ondo State in 2009 and that the persistent style of forgery, manipulation and corruption remains the secret of his victories.
“It is sad that on account of premeditated forgery of high level security document by a desperate and hypocritical politician, justice was miscarried, the rule of law arrested and a Judicial coup de’tat was executed against the people of Ondo State.
“It also embarrasses the nation that the esteemed Judiciary allowed itself to be humbled and ridiculed by the corrupt tendency of Mimiko occasioning service of injustice and undermining of the fundamental principle of democracy and free choice.
“The mockery of the judiciary is further emphasised by the facts that in 2007, the Tribunal and Appeal Court judgements that installed Mimiko into office were based on false and forged security documents just as the recent 2013 Tribunal judgement that affirmed him in office was also based on inverted principles of law and a non existing section 131(5) of the 2010 Electoral Act.
“We hope that this startling revelation of how Ondo State people were judicially shortchanged in 2007 will draw the critical attention of the nation’s judiciary, particularly the appellate courts to seek and confront the ugly facts of election cases brought before them to save Nigerians from civilian coups.
