No Discrepancies In Osun Election Result – PDP Expert Witness –Says, ‘I’m Not A Registered Statistician’

The expert witness of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship candidate in the August 9 election in Osun State, Mr Samuel Oduntan has confirmed to the state Election Petition Tribunal that there was no any discrepancies in the results of the election he analysed for his principal.
The witness who had claimed to be a statistician early in his witness statement also made a u-turn while giving oral evidence before the Elizabeth Ikpejime-led tribunal on Thursday and confessed that he was not a registered statistician.
He said he used Certified True Copies (CTCs) and duplicates of the results forms of the election which had earlier been tendered by the petitioners and he found no discrepancies in the course of his analysis .
Omisore and the PDP are challenging the August 9 re-election of Governor Rauf Aregbesola and the All Progressive Congress (APC), while the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was joined as a party.
The witness who had stated in his written deposition that no voting point was created in the polling units being challenged by the petitioner, was confronted with the result forms of some of the units and he quickly made a u-turn that voting points were created, but not based on 300 voters per voting points.
Being drilled by the INEC counsel, Mr Ayotunde Ogunleye, the expert said, “I am not a registered statistician. In this kind of two analysis I have done in the past, those who employed me did not win the case.‎
“I did a similar analysis in the case of Kogi State and submitted the report, but it was not tendered for the case.
“I am not from Osun, neither did I monitor the election, but I was employed by the petitioners to do the analysis of the election materials”, he confimed.
Also answering question from the APC counsel, Professor Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), Oduntan said “in his comparison of the duplicates result forms given to the petitioners and the CTC of the forms, I found no discrepancies. I didn’t say I found any discrepancies.
The witness who had also claimed in his statement that the result forms he analysed were not stamped nor signed, confirmed to the tribunal that he did not see the original copies of the documents to ascertain whether they were signed or not.
Osinbajo subsequently confronted the witness with the fact that there were a lot of errors in his report of the purported analysis, which he denied.
While also being cross-examined by Aregbesola counsel, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), the expert witness confirmed that inspite of the fact that not all the polling units and wards in the 17 local governments in contention are being challenged, he based his analysis on all the wards and units of the 17 councils.
Earlier, the INEC counsel had objected to the admissibility of the report of the purported analysis of the expert, saying the document is inadmissible under section 84 (2 and 4) of the Evidence Act.
He argued that the document was a computer-generated evidence. Before it can be admitted, it must be accompanied by certificate of identification of the device through which it was made.
The tribunal reserved ruling on the admissibility of the documents, but marked it as exhibit.
Other witnesses who testfied after the expert witness were Adebisi Gbolagade who was the PDP Collation Agent for Ifelodun Local Government and Wasiu Olaitan, the PDP supervisor for Ward 4 of the local government.
Gbolagade said his party did not have party agents in many of the 105 polling units in the local government, inspite the facts that the agents signed the result forms.
He also confirmed to the court that all the PDP agents in all the wards submitted the result forms to him.
Olaitan also said he was not the one that signed the result form tendered by the petitioners’ counsel as the ward 4 collation agent, even though the document was signed.
OSUN DEFENDER