A witness for Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 presidential election, Ndubuisi Nwobu, narrated how his candidate was rigged out by the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, in Anambra State.
Nwobu told the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC that “magic happened to the votes of the PDP candidate at different collation centres.”
The results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) showed that LP’s Obi scored 584,621 votes in Anambra State; Atiku of the PDP polled 9,036 votes, while, Bola Tinubu (now the President) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 5,111 votes.
During Wednesday’s proceedings, Nwobu, the Anambra State PDP chairman, and also the state collation agent of the party, told the court that after the counting of votes, the presiding officers refused to upload the results.
The witness also claimed that he visited about 30 polling units out of the 4,720 polling units in the state on Election Day.
He said he was forced to sign the result sheet of the election at the state collation centre because he wouldn’t have been given a copy if he didn’t.
He said, “I signed the result sheet when it was obvious that without signing, a copy would not be made available to me.
“Results were entered at the polling units. But every effort made to get the presiding officer to upload it on IREV (the INEC Result Viewing Portal) proved abortive.”
Asked if the result sheets were signed by agents of the PDP at polling units before they were taken to the collation centre, Nwobu replied, “Yes”.
“They were taken to the collation centre at the ward level. That is where the magic started happening,” he said, adding, “There were problems at the polling units with presiding officers.”
According to him, in some instances, he had to intervene to prevent voters and other party agents from attacking INEC officials.
“Even in certain instances, I had to intervene to ensure that some of the polling officers were not attacked by voters and other political party agents,” Nwobu said.
Nwobu was Atiku’s eleventh witness to testify before the five-member panel headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani.
Meanwhile, and also yesterday, INEC, APC, and Tinubu opposed Atiku’s subpoenaed witnesses testifying in court.
The respondents appeared unsettled when the petitioners called the first subpoenaed witness, saying they were not prepared to cross-examine the witness having been served the witness statement only yesterday.
Through their counsel, they objected to the taking of the evidence of the witness who was said to be an ad-hoc staff of INEC during the February 25 presidential election.
Counsel to the petitioners, Chris Uche, SAN, informed the court that the petitioners had three subpoenaed witnesses. He then went ahead to call the first one.
No sooner had the president felt the need to mount the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and the witness entered the witness box, than the counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, vehemently opposed the witness giving his testimony.
Mahmoud said, “I was only served this morning with the statement of the witness, and as such, I have to study the statement to do a thorough cross-examination”.
He insisted that the witness could not be taken since he was said to be an ad-hoc staff of the commission, and as such, he would have to go and look at INEC records to enable him to confirm the status of the witness and prepare adequately.
Counsel for Tinubu, Akin Olujimi (SAN); and that of the APC, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), also said they were served with the witness statement on Thursday, and need time to peruse it for proper cross-examination.
Attempts by Uche to insist that the witness be taken saying ordinarily, subpoenaed witness statements didn’t have to be front-loaded were futile as the respondents insisted that they had to peruse the statements.
Uche pleaded with the court to take at least one of the subpoenaed witnesses, saying there was nothing strange in the statement to warrant an adjournment.
Following the respondents’ insistence, Uche urged the court to adjourn until tomorrow for the three subpoenaed witnesses to give their testimony.
Earlier, the petitioners called their 11th witness, Nwobu, the PDP Collation Agent for Anambra.
Nwobu, in his evidence-in-chief, told the court that he was forced to sign Form EC8D because it became evident that if he did not sign, INEC would not give him a copy.
The News Agency of Nigeria, (NAN) reports that Form EC8D is the result sheet for states.
Under cross-examination by Mahmoud, the witness told the court that although the election was peaceful at his polling unit, INEC officials refused to upload the results to INEC Result Verification Portal (IREV).
“The election went well in my polling unit and the result was entered, but we insisted that the result be uploaded on IREV, and all efforts proved abortive.
“There was no problem at the polling units, it was at the ward level that magic started happening,” the witness said.
He also told the court that he visited about 30 out of the 4,720 polling units in Anambra State.
Cross-examined by Fagbemi, SAN, counsel to the APC, the witness told the court that his major grouse with the election was that there was no real-time upload of results on IREV as was promised by the INEC chairman.
The witness also told Akin Olujimi, SAN, the counsel to President Bola Tinubu, that the Labour Party won the election in Anambra.
When the petitioner attempted to call witnesses subpoenaed from INEC, all the respondents objected because they had just been served with the witness statements and they needed to peruse them.
The chairman of the court, Justice Tsammani thereafter adjourned proceedings until Thursday (today) to allow the respondents to study the witness statements of the subpoenaed witnesses for seamless cross-examination.
The respondents in the petition marked: CA/PEPC/05/2023, are; INEC, President Tinubu, and the APC.
In a renewed bid to justify his request for nullification of Tinubu’s election, the presidential candidate of LP, Obi, yesterday tendered the collated final presidential election results used in declaring Tinubu as the winner.
The final result was admitted by the PEPC without any objection from INEC, President Tinubu, Vice President Kashim Shettima, and the APC who are the four respondents in the petition.
Apart from not opposing the final presidential election results contained in form EC8DA, the four respondents also did not oppose deeming the vital documents as being read in the open court.
Obi and the LP, through their lawyer, Prof Paul Ananaba (SAN) tendered the documents alongside several exhibits to establish the petition against Tinubu’s election.
However, while the respondents vehemently opposed the admission of collated election results from the ward, local government, to the state level, they accepted tendering the final result without any objections.
At yesterday’s proceedings, the collated results in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) contained in forms EC8D used by the electoral body were also tendered and admitted as exhibits.
Also at the PEPC hearing on his petition against Tinubu, Obi, who was physically present in the court to witness proceedings, shifted his battle from ward-collated election results to local government election results and state-collated results before tendering the final result as exhibits in aid of his petition.
The collated results at the local government levels are contained in forms EC8C used by the INEC during the February 25 presidential poll.
The 13 states where the ward collated results were tendered and admitted as exhibits are Bayelsa, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Edo, Lagos, Niger, and Ondo.
The rest states are Oyo, Rivers, Sokoto and Ekiti, and Delta.
Obi tendered collated results in 8 local government areas of Bayelsa, 23 in Benue, 18 in Cross River, 10 in Ebonyi, 18 in Edo, 20 in Lagos, and 25 in Niger State.
Others are 18 in Ondo, 33 in Oyo, 23 in Rivers, 23 in Sokoto, 16 in Ekiti, and 25 in Delta.
Although INEC, Tinubu, Shettima, and the APC, who are respondents in the petition signified their objections against the admission of the collated results. The presiding justice of the court, Tsammani, admitted them as exhibits in favour of Obi and the LP.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the court, Tsammani has fixed June 8 for the continuation of the hearing in the petition.
Addressing newsmen later, Obi’s counsel, Ananaba, explained that the coast is now clear for his clients to begin to call witnesses to testify to establish the petition.
The professor of law revealed that the witnesses will speak through the admitted documents one after the other to show the court where electoral malpractices were carried out during the February 25 presidential election.
(NAN)
