Hashim Akintunde Abioye, the Chairman of Osun State Independent Electoral Commission and the commission’s Chief Returning Officer, speaks on the recent local government elections conducted by his commission and the controversies surrounding the elections. Excerpts:
You conducted your local government elections as scheduled while some people said you shouldn’t have. Why did you go ahead with the elections and ignored the calls for its halt?
I would not know the background of the propositions of those who felt that we ought not to have conducted the election because there was no legal hurdle against the conduct of the election. The election was built on a legitimate foundation which is constitutional and legal.
What I mean is that if you are talking about conduct of any election, one of the cardinal components is ‘notice of election’. The notice of election was given on February 19, 2024. That means we gave a notice of one year, 360 days’ notice as required by the Electoral Act 2022 and as required by the Osun State Electoral Commission Law 2022.
The OSSIEC law 2022 provides for 360 days’ notice (Section 24 thereof), and Section 28 of the Electoral Act 2022 also provides for 360 days’ notice. So, in terms of notice we did not falter on the side of the law. From the day we published the notice of election up to the time of the election, we rolled out the schedule of activities and the timetable, and we followed the schedule of activities one after the other without missing any of those steps.
These things are in stages and there are three critical stages in an election process: the notice of election, the time for submission of list of candidates by political parties – nomination; and publication of names of candidates. All these things are time-bound and they have definitive periods under the law. If you miss any of those steps, then the election would amount to naught. It will be nullified at the end of the day.
You can check our timetable, we never missed any of those steps and all these shenanigans came about two weeks before the election. Some people said they purportedly got a judgement which reinstated them to office and that as a result of that, there shouldn’t be an election. They also said that if OSSIEC went ahead with the election, it would be contempt of court. There were threats here and there and all over but we did not succumb to any threat because we followed due process.
It is worthy to note that there were no legal hurdles against the conduct of the election. More so, there were vacancies in all the local government council areas of Osun State and the law allowed us to fill those vacancies. So, we were supported by law and there was a judgement of the court which mandated OSSIEC to go ahead to fill those vacancies.
The election conducted by OSSIEC in 2022 was nullified by two separate judgements of the federal high court. OSSIEC appealed neither of the two judgements, which means that those two decisions were binding on OSSIEC. Some of those who were affected by the decisions appealed the two decisions, they succeeded in one of the appeals but they did not succeed in the other. So if they had succeeded in the other, we would have said that OSSIEC was right to have conducted the election but there is still a subsisting decision of the federal high court as affirmed by the Court of Appeal, which dismissed the appeal against that decision. That was the decision of the Court of Appeal of January 13, 2025 which affirmed the judgement of the federal high court in a matter filed by the APP that is: FHC/CS/OS/103-2022.
If any political party is saying that that decision is not binding on them, it is binding on OSSIEC, that means that there was no election in 2022 and you cannot build something on nothing. I am saying that the background of the election that we conducted and its foundation was that of legitimacy, constitutionality and legality.
What encumbrances or objections did OSSIEC receive during the pendency of the 360 days’ notice you gave in the build-up to the election? Were there notices to you that what you were doing was wrong and illegal?
We were inaugurated as Chairman and members of OSSIEC on November 13, 2023. Barely three months after our inauguration, and after preliminary works, meetings and consultations with stakeholders, we felt that we should proceed right away to perform our constitutional responsibility, having seen that the radar was clear for us to give notice of election.
This was after we had also ascertained that there was no democratically elected local government system in Osun State as at the time we were inaugurated. So, that means there were vacancies in all the local government areas of Osun State. That was why we proceeded to fill the vacancies by giving 360 days’ notice to start the process of the LG elections. So, if we had given 360 days’ notice, could anyone still say that we rushed to conduct elections, or that we were desperate to conduct elections? This was a journey of not less than one year. That person must be someone who is not faithful to himself or herself and who does not love Osun State.
I must state that there had been some intrigues. Could you believe that APC went to the high court of Osun State asking the court to compel OSSIEC to conduct election? Imagine that. They were at the High Court of Osun State, Court 2 asking the court to compel OSSIEC to go ahead and conduct an election. They later abandoned the suit and it was terminated around October/November 2024. A political party that went to court to seek some reliefs, part of which was that caretaker committees were illegal and that the OSSIEC which they sued in the case, should be mandated to conduct election, has suddenly turned around to claim that there are no vacancies. By that suit they had acknowledged that there were vacancies and it is our duty to fill the vacancies.
If that political party has now turned against the whole people of Osun State despite their participation in the process and submitting nominations and fielded candidates, only for them to say that they were pulling out of the elections about 24 hours to the election.
I also read on the social media that if OSSIEC should proceed with the conduct of the election, OSSIEC will be running into contempt of court. I dare to say that we did not run into any contempt of court. There was no court order that we violated, rather we complied with a subsisting court judgement which mandated us to proceed with the election. So, if there is anyone who is in contempt, it is those people who are going about with the wrong proposition that has now set Osun State into a field of unwarranted crisis by their reckless, mischievous and wicked misinterpretation of the judgement of the court of appeal of February 10, 2025 which did not give any right to any party.
“Those who recklessly, mischievously, wickedly and selfishly misinterpreted deliberately misinterpreted that judgement to mean reinstatement and have now thrown Osun State into crisis which led to the loss of lives of some people. They will have something to say on the day of judgement, the blood of the people who lost their lives as a result of their wicked act will be on their neck”
That judgement did not give right to any party whether as appellant or respondent. The only right given to any party at all in that judgement was the award of cost against the third respondent in their claim on account of the fact that the suit filed by the third respondent at the federal high court in 2022 was premature and speculative.
The issues that could have made the Court of Appeal determine the validity or otherwise of the election were the issues the Court of Appeal treated as “mere academic.” And when you say an issue has become academic, it means it has no practical utilitarian value. So if you want to create any relief at all in any judgement of any court, or you have some reliefs, it must be in practical terms.
These people filed a notice of appeal seeking about seven reliefs which is an order allowing the appeal which the court granted. The second is for the dismissal of the amendment of appeal filed by the PDP at the federal high court, which the court granted. The third relief was for the court to uphold the preliminary objection which the court also granted. The relief G in that notice of appeal was for an order of reinstatement and the Court of Appeal never mentioned anything about it.
Those who recklessly, mischievously, wickedly and selfishly misinterpreted deliberately misinterpreted that judgement to mean reinstatement and have now thrown Osun State into crisis which led to the loss of lives of some people. They will have something to say on the day of judgement, the blood of the people who lost their lives as a result of their wicked act will be on their neck.
The political parties interested in the LG election in your state aren’t just two. What has been the position of the other political parties in all of these?
When we were first appointed, there was turmoil, agitations and even protests, especially from our friends in the Inter-Party Advisory Council. However, they soon saw our sincerity and honesty and transparency; and that we wanted to make a change and change the narrative as against what obtained in the past. They then supported us. 18 out of the 19 registered political parties in Nigeria participated in the process. Only the Youth Party did not participate because they don’t have a registered office in Osun State as we speak. But 18 parties, including the major political parties as we know them participated. As the umpire, all the political parties are equal before us. All the political parties have candidates in all the LGAs and the wards. Some have five LGs, some in 10 and 20. Some even participated in just five wards but all of them fielded candidates and this depended on their strength.
Some months before the election, we called stakeholders meetings and all the 18 political parties at a meeting passed a vote of confidence in OSSIEC and its leadership. They expressed confidence in the commission and in what we are doing. Now they have left us wondering what has changed.
Just five days before the election, news began to fly around and we heard that OSSIEC would be in contempt of court if we went ahead with the election. It got to the extent of moving the office of the Inspector General of Police down to OSSIEC.
The IGP instructed his men to seal-up our office. Because of our transparency, we had distributed election materials ahead of the election in order for us not to have problems not knowing that we were going to have security threats by the security agencies, especially the police. We had a very good relationship, worked together in harmony and they had been keeping our premises safe. A day before the election, they just showed up and said they had instructions from the IGP to seal up our office, which they did. Up till the time of this interview, they have not unsealed our office. They are still in our premises and said we will not enter, that it is on the order of the IGP. I don’t know if the IGP is above the court of law.
Even the Attorney General of the Federation is not above the court of law. There was an order of the court mandating us to proceed with the election which we complied with. I don’t know the order that the Attorney General of the Federation has acted upon to have given advice to the IGP to seal up our office, because the IGP said he was acting on the advice of the Attorney General of the Federation.
I don’t know their business in local government elections. But thank God the election went on peacefully, freely and fairly; and winners emerged.
If clarifications about vacancies in the LGAs are sought, how would you explain the vacancies in the LGAs?
OSSIEC conducted an election in 2022 and two separate court judgements from cases instituted by two separate political parties nullified that election. If an election is nullified, that means nobody can benefit from it. There was a consequential order in each of the two separate judgements which says ‘all individuals purportedly elected under the purported elected are hereby sacked from office.’ It was a positive order of the court. The first order of the court was against OSSIEC directly, that the election it conducted ‘is hereby nullified.’
These judgements sacked APC and their purported candidates from office.
Those saying that the federal high court has no jurisdiction in the matter but INEC were a party to the suit. The issue of voter’s register and its upgrade are all the exclusive preserve of the INEC and no state high court has jurisdiction to determine anything having to do with the control, administration and management of a federal agency.
That made INEC to be a party to that suit because INEC is a federal agency. The release or non-release of voter’s register was an issue in that case and the jurisdictional competence of the federal high court to determine the case was one of the main issues in that case. The issue of whether the federal high court had jurisdiction in the matter was never contested at the court of appeal.
Meanwhile, it must be clarified that it was not the governor that sacked these people from office, it was the court. It was the court that determined the PDP suit, it was not the OSSIEC and I was not in OSSIEC at that time. I wasn’t and I never knew I was going to be in OSSIEC at that time. They even filed a stay of execution which was refused by the federal high court. Also, for those political parties claiming that that judgement in the case of APP does not affect them, it affected OSSIEC, it is a hook on the neck of OSSIEC. It gave the commission an opportunity to go ahead with the election. So, we were not in contempt of any court.
You have sued the IGP and the Osun State Commissioner of Police. What are your expectations?
An intrigue to this is that the Commissioner of Police, through the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Operations), told us that we should provide a list of all the polling units, the wards and the local governments for the elections. That was five days to the elections. These are in the public domain because we were not using any other data except the ones provided by INEC. The voter’s register we used for the election was provided by INEC. We wrote to INEC and they released the electronic copy of the register to us backed by a letter. We did not do anything illegal.
