Electoral materials Inspection: PDP, APC lawyers at each other’s throats

Lawyers of both the peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Osun State, yesterday, almost resorted to physical combat and disrupted the planned inspection of election materials used for the August 9 governorship election.
Both parties were granted  requests by the tribunal to inspect the election materials used for the last governorship election in the state.
But at commencement of the exercise at the INEC headquarters, Osogbo, lawyers of both parties almost exchanged blows after a hot argument that ensued between them as a result of absence of an exhibit to be used for the inspection.
The drama which lasted for an hour before the intervention of INEC officials who persuaded them to give peace a chance,  saw the lawyers calling themselves unprintable names and pointing fingers at one another.
Trouble started when INEC Deputy Director in charge of Electoral Operations, Mr. Azeez Olatunji, announced that items and electoral materials to be inspected for the day were those of Obokun and Ila-Orangun Local governments of the state.
After the announcement, the deputy Director stated that the PDP in its request sought to inspect 17 local governments’ electoral materials and demanded for the cooperation of the two parties.
He listed items to be inspected as ballot papers, election registers, election result sheets and added that if other materials like cubicle and ballot boxes were needed to be inspected in the course of the exercise, it would be granted.
Also, the administrative Secretary of INEC, Oladipo Oladapo, assured the two political parties that the commission would be fair to all as it would discharge its duty with transparency.
Similarly, the commission’s legal department’s staff, Barrister Wiltep Ishaku who is to preside over the inspection of the materials, told both parties to cooperate with officials of the INEC.
At this point, it was discovered that an Exhibit tagged “A” was missing in the items to be inspected.
Some lawyers from the APC kicked that the inspection should not continue until the missing exhibit was provided while the PDP lawyers pleaded that the Exhibit could still be produced by INEC while  inspection of the available ones should continue.
This suggestion infuriated the APC lawyers who maintained their stance that nothing would be done until the Exhibit was produced.
At this stage, Daud Akinloye of the APC and his counterpart, Kehinde Adesiyan of the PDP started exchanging hot words when the  administrative Secretary ordered that the “Exhibit A” should be produced before the commencement of the inspection.
At the time of this report, the inspection was yet to commence but some useful items to be used for the exercise like photocopy machines, Scanners and other equipments were displayed on the tables made available by officials of INEC.