Fresh fight stalls Osun election materials inspection Counsels to Governor Rauf Aregbesola and Senator Iyiola Omisore of the Peoples Democratic Party on Wednesday engaged in a fresh physical combat over an attempt to use video camera to record the inspection of election materials. It was gathered that the inspection had hardly started when a camera man hired by Aregbesola’s legal team started recording the proceedings but one of the counsels representing the PDP governorship candidate, Mr. Kehinde Adesiyan objected the move. Adesiyan was said to to have argued that video recording of the proceedings was not part of the order given by Justice I. M Bako-led Election Petitions Tribunal. However, it was gathered that Aregbesola’s counsel, Mr. Dawood Akinloye, insisted that they had the liberty to record the inspection since it was not in any way tampering with it except the PDP had something to hide. Akinloye at this point collected the camera from the camera man and started recording as PDP lawyers were inspecting the election material. Hot argument ensued and officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission stepped in to douse the tension. An official of INEC reportedly said that the commission would record the inspection and give copies of the recordings to the two parties but Akinloye raised an objection to this, saying he could not rely on the INEC for their recording since his client had brought a camera for the same purpose. Akinloye’s refusal to stop recording the inspection was said to have resulted into a fight between him and Adesiyan. Akinloye later told journalists in an interview that Adesiyan attacked him and held his neck while he was filming the happenings at the INEC office. He said, “We brought a camera man to record the inspection but they said no. They threatened to arrest him. I took the camera from the man and started recording but resisted me. “At this point INEC officials offered to record and give both of us their recording but we refused because we cannot trust them. “As I was recording, Adesiyan, who calls himself a lawyer came and manhandled me and grabbed my neck and disrupted the whole excercise. It is a pity that is the same way former Governor Isiaka Adeleke was attacked by the same PDP.” But Adesiyan denied the allegation of assault leveled against him by Aregbesola’s counsel. He said that he insisted that the respondent lawyers would not be allowed record the inspection because that was not part of the order given by the tribunal. He said, “The recording can be mischievously manipulated. Video recording was not part of the order given by the tribunal. The order is to inspect not to record, we know they they can manipulate it and give out a doctored copy. “I did not attack him. I am a lawyer of about 17 years at the bar I cannot attack anybody. He (Akinloye) attacked me after he had removed the cord of the photocopy machine we were using. “It is a lie that I attacked him, he was the one that attacked me. He didn’t behave as a lawyer at all and I was surprised by what he did.” It will be recalled that lawyers from the two parties almost fought on Tuesday when the inspection of the materials started as they engaged one another in a heated argument. Security men were deployed at the INEC office on Wednesday to prevent crowd of supporters from disrupting the exercise.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 09:27:29 +0000