The word “dummy” can pass for a noun or a verb. In whichever context it is used, it is pointing to something not real or realistic. As a noun, it means an object created to resemble or serve as a substitute for the real or usual one. It could mean a model or replica of a thing or a human being. It could mean a fake object or a feigned thing, a simulation. It could be used to describe a person who is ignorant of the real situation, someone who has been deceived and who has bought seriously into the deceit. As a verb, a person is said to be “dummied” if that person has been deceived about the real situation.
The election petition filed by former Osun Governor Oyetola and his APC at the Osun Governorship Election Tribunal after their defeat at the July 16th Osun 2022 governorship election, can unarguably pass for a dummy. The petition is majorly based on two planks viz: (i) forgery (ii) over-voting/non-compliance.
The two planks form the two wings with which Oyetola and his party’s petition want to fly at the tribunal. Sadly for the petitioners, the two wings are dummies which cannot fly or be used to fly at all. The first wing being the dummy of forgery was sold to Oyetola by some saboteurs within Osun PDP (who have now decamped to another party), while Oyetola himself procured another one by himself for himself from somewhere else. That is what desperation, lust for power and arrogance can bring about.
The dummy of forgery was on the basis of the academic credentials of Senator Ademola Adeleke. He was alleged to have forged the degree certificate of Atlanta Metropolitan College, USA, and the High School Diploma Certificate of Penn Foster College, also in USA. They also alleged that he forged the documents he presented as evidence of attendance at Ede Muslim High School, Ede (formerly Ede Muslim Grammar School). The dummy in the said allegation of forgery is the reasoning of the petitioners that Adeleke got a degree 24 days after his high school diploma which is an O’ level equivalent with the insinuation that the diploma was the basis for the degree. That is, the diploma was the qualification he used to gain admission for the degree. The insistence of the APC’s counsel at the tribunal for INEC to bring the original form cf001 submitted by Adeleke to INEC in 2018 was to achieve one thing.. to show to the tribunal that from the 2018 documents, Adeleke had nothing to qualify him for any admission abroad for a degree. The other aim, which would seem like eating one’s vomit, is an attempt to re-open the issue of Adeleke’s attainment and education up to school certificate level, in respect of which the courts have pronounced in the past, and Adeleke vindicated.
The dummy was finely packaged for Oyetola and he himself so much bought into it that he could not discern the obvious reality that Adeleke’s degree and the high school diploma are not related at all. They are independent of each other. Adeleke’s academic journey abroad started in 1981 when he got admission into Jacksonville University, USA, using his cumulative school grades plus ACT/TOEFL. He later transferred his course to Atalanta Metropolitan College, USA in 1986, and he was in and out of school for business until he completed his degree in 2021.
His academic transcripts have now become public documents and certified true copies of same can be obtained from the Tribunal. This was the dummy of forgery propounded to high heavens by the APC and Oyetola loyalists. They have polluted the media space with their terrible lies and propaganda against Adeleke. They even circulated a fake NECO result which they recklessly ascribed to Adeleke, however, such was never established to be part of Adeleke’s documents at the Tribunal.
I read many newspaper headlines and also in the social media that “Adeleke’s witness admitted he (Adeleke) got a degree within 24 days. That’s pretty sensational! Everyone will want to pay an attention to the headlines, and by which a reader who is not at home with the facts and evidence at the Tribunal will come to a conclusion that Adeleke forged. With that, they would have satisfied themselves by way of propaganda, to curry undue sympathy from the public, on the basis of a non-existent forgery. That is Oyetola’s first dummy at the Tribunal.
The second dummy is the alleged over-voting. The APC has another dummy in their unsynchronised BVAS report. Their case is erected not on the actual BVAS machine figures and the result sheets, but on a report from the INEC server. By the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022, section 62 thereof, any ctc of a document used for an election whether manual or electronic is a post-election procedure. This pre-supposes that it is not part of the election at all, as there is a procedure for step-by-step recording of votes during the election as provided for in the Electoral Act, 2022. To establish over-voting, it has to be on the basis of the physical materials deployed to the polling units during the election, in this case, the ballot papers, the electoral forms, the voters register and the BVAS machine itself.
The petitioners are not relying on any of these to establish over-voting but an external document, a total stranger to the polling unit during the polls. A certified true copy of a public document not in agreement with the original public document is like an illegitimate child. I laughed and laughed when a snippet of the cross-examination of a Deputy-Director became a subject of APC propaganda where she mentioned “seemingly over-voting”, but the portion where she explained that away was deliberately and wickedly kept away by the media propagandists. You cannot establish over-voting on the basis of any document aside the four I mentioned earlier. The witness explained this, but the media propagandists shouted to radio and TV stations (including TVC) where the issue of the purported admission of over-voting was discussed while the propagandist seemingly buried the explanation given by the witness under re-examination. A trip to the registry of the Tribunal for certified true copies of the proceedings and documents received in evidence whether with or without objection would have helped in the media analyses if the media would play their role of responsibility to the public.
These are the two giant dummies of Oyetola and his APC which are now having a date with fate at the Tribunal as dates for adoption of final addresses and judgement draw nearer.
The APC are propaganda personified. Save for very few among them, they are generally wicked, terrible and arrogant in power. They carry their business with reckless abandon and unparalleled impunity. In Osun, they converted and conferred by themselves, on themselves, many public assets and still roll out propaganda against the present administration for asking questions in that regard, for calling on them honourably to return state assets. Such is the set of immediate past political office holders in Osun that Osun people have been grappling with. They want to retain power at all cost, they never dreamt of leaving the corridors of power for a second. The “Aagbeelemo” crooners are now singing another song ” A ma gba pada”. They are planning based on their dummies at the Tribunal which have no wings to fly.
Their dummies, like all dummies, have no life and they now face a date with fate at the Tribunal.
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