INEC abused BVAS, at fault for declaring Tinubu winner – PDP, LP witnesses tell PEPT

Proceedings at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) in Abuja resumed, Friday, with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, the Labour Party with Peter Obi making appearances in court to defend their petitions seeking the nullification of the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its flagbearer, Bola Tinibu in the February 25 poll.

While Peter Obi appeared for the Labour Party, Mr. Saturday Monsignia Esq Deputy Legal Services, APC represented his party.

In the PDP hearing, the main opposition party called up its National Collation Agent in the February 25 presidential election, Senator Dino Melaye, as star witness, who told the court that results collation errors by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) led to declaration of President Bola Tinubu.

Melaye, under cross examination, further insisted that the failure by INEC to electronically transmit results for the February 25 election was directly responsible for these errors.

Melaye informed the court that he left the National Collation Center at the International Conference Centre in Abuja when the alleged deliberate errors became unbearable and intolerable to him.

Senator Melaye who testified as a Star Witness for former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar whose joint petition with PDP is seeking nullification of Tinubu’s declaration as winner of the 2023 Presidential election.

Led in his evidence-in-Chief by Atiku’s lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche SAN, the witness said that he refused to sign the final collated results so as not to be part of corruption and malpractices that allegedly engulfed the collation exercise.

Melaye who is the second Star Witness in the hearing of the petition insisted that the results which INEC acted upon to declare Tinubu winner of the February 25 presidential election was wrongly computed by INEC.

He further told the court that besides himself, many agents of the PDP in the presidential election did not also sign the results at various levels.

While responding to cross examinations from Tinubu’s lawyer, Chief Akin Olujimi, SAN, the star witness insisted that failure of transmission of what has been recorded is an infringement of the law.

According to Melaye, electronic transmission of results from the polling units unto the IReV portal ‘is a very important aspect of the election process, arguing that without IReV the election circle cannot be said to have been completed.’

The Labour Party’s petition followed as the party also called up its own star witness for a second time, a professor of Mathematics from the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Eric Ufoedo, as the fourth witness in the proceedings, who attested to INEC’s misconduct in failing to ‘properly utilize’ its own IReV system, which he claimed would have resolved all the disputed if it had been effectively deployed by the electoral umpire.

According to Prof Ufoedo, the discrepancies seen in the IReV portal and the collation Centre results declared would not contain discrepancies as being seen.

The mathematics professor who informed the court that he was contracted by the LP team to determine  INEC’s compliance with Electoral Acts and its regulations barely two days to the commencement of the February 25 poll, analysed INEC election results declared for Rivers and Benue states to prove his statement under cross examination.

According to the LP witness, ‘no maths formula was needed to see why results sheets are blurry,’ as he explained  the over 18, 000 blurred election results sheets from those two states alone, which he added is not exclusive to these two states.

LP also called up a second witness, a reported with Arise Television who was subpoenaed by the party to appear before the court, Lumie Idevbie, as fifth witness, over the news company’s live broadcast of an  the INEC National Chairman Prof Mahmood Yakubu, featuring at at Chatham House in London, where the latter had assured on the electronic systems deployed for the poll.

LP’s sixth witness was s staff of the AIT broadcast media, Ijeoma Osamor, which also featured Prof. Yakubu appearing on her programme, ‘Democracy Today,’ on the same subject of electronic transmission, especially the BVAS.

Friday’s proceedings concluded as Justice Haruna Tsammani adjourned till Monday, June 19 on both the PDP and LP petitions.