Can a document previously admitted and marked as an exhibit come out of the court registry and be re tendered without the marks on it??

That was the riddle before the election tribunal in Osogbo hearing the petition of the Action Congress governorship candidate in Osun state, Mr Rauf Aregbesola on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 as a document admitted by the former Justice Thomas Naron tribunal and marked as an exhibit was re-tendered by an AC witness without the exhibit marks on it.

The undoing of the witness was the record of proceedings of the former tribunal which was admitted on Tuesday and which showed that the witness tendered the document before the Justice Naron tribunal which boldly marked it “Exhibit 19.”The witness, Olanrewaju Israel Babatunde from Ife South local government also confirmed to the tribunal that the document he just tendered which were reports he claimed to have collected from his party agents were admitted and marked so by the last tribunal.

He also confirmed to the tribunal that what he just tendered had no mark to show that it had been tendered before.

Addressing the tribunal on the discovery, counsel to Governor Oyinlola, Chief Rafiu Lawal Rabana said it was a serious matter that touched on the integrity of the tribunal because the marked document was in the custody of the tribunal declaring that what had just been tendered was a concocted replacement of the original reports marked by the last tribunal.

“It is a serious matter that a document that was supposed to be in the registry of the tribunal after having been marked “Exhibit 19″ will come out and be tendered unmarked by someone who claimed he retrieved it from the tribunal. Something grave has happened and I do not want to use a word that will be too weighty but what has happened is nothing but a fraud,” Rabana said.  

The tribunal chairman, Justice Ali Garba however washed clean the hands of his panel from the obvious scam declaring that Aregbesola had applied for and collected all his documents from the tribunal.

He declared that it did not emanate from the registry of the tribunal and were in fact “petitioners document.”

Another AC witness, Nafiu Raji from Ayedade Local Government was in the witness box for over three hours under-cross examination from lawyers of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and those of INEC and the police, Chief Lawal Rabana, SAN, Dayo Famakin-Johnson and Niyi Owolade respectively over another contradictory statement he made on oath.

Before the former tribunal headed by Justice Naron, the witness had stated on oath that one Jelili Adesiyan, who he accused of leading the thugs that disrupted the election was his in-law.

However, when he was asked yesterday whether Adesiyan was his in-law or not, the man vehemently said several times that Adesiyan was not his in-law. The records of proceedings of the former tribunal containing the evidence given by all the 102 witnesses called by the AC that time, which had already been admitted as exhibit R5 by the Justice Ali Garba tribunal, was then used to contradict the witness.

He was asked to read aloud a part of his former testimony on oath where he averred that Jelili Adesiyan was his in-law. An attempt by counsel to the AC candidate, Mr. Ebun Sofunde, SAN, to ask the witness to explain the contradictions in his evidence was overruled by the tribunal following objections from counsel to all the respondents.

In answer to another question on whether the witness who claimed to be ward supervisor for the AC in his ward got reports from his agents before he deposed to his statement, the witness answered ‘No’.

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