Tinubu to open defence, Wednesday, as INEC closes case at PEPT

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tuesday, continued and closed its defence at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) in Abuja, with witnesses finally taking the stand at the Labour Party and Peter Obi case.

INEC’s defence proceedings last Monday, July 3, did not begin on a positive note after its witness failed to show up in the petition filed by the Labour Party and Peter Obi, the party’s presidential candidate in the February 25, 2023 election, however, the witness took the stands in the afternoon session to face cross examination in the case by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as winner and now President.

During Tuesday’s session in the LP petition, INEC’s Deputy Director of ICT, Lawrence Bayode, was led in evidence by Abubakar Mahmoud, who is the commission’s lead counsel.

INEC is the first respiondent in the petitions filed by the PDP and LP seeking the annulment of the February 25 election which produced Tinubu as winner, as declared by the electoral umpire.

The witness, Bayode, while being cross-examined by counsel to both the second respondent (President Tinubu) and third respondent (Vice President Kashim Shettima), Mr. Wole Olanipekun SAN, maintained that some blurred documents downloaded from INEC’s result viewing portal (IReV) were irrelevant for the collation of results of the presidential election.

According to Bayode, if the sheets downloaded from the IreV are not clear, the physical results could also be obtained.

After the witness was discharged, Mahmoud told the court that they had no other witness to call.

Consequently, Olanipekun announced the intention of the APC candidates to open their defence, from Wednesday, July 5, one day ahead, as INEC had been allotted three days to prosecute its defence at the PEPT.

Hence, the five-member panel led by Haruna Tsammani adjourned the matter till Wednesday, July 5, for the president and vice-president to open their defence to the petition

Tinubu is set to open his defence at the ongoing presidential election petition tribunal.

Tinubu would open his defence as the second respondent in the petition presented before the court by Labour Party’s Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) challenging Tinubu’s victory at the presidential poll on Saturday, February 25.

Vice President Shettima will commence his own defence at the close of Tinubu’s hearing.

Earlier, Tuesday, during the LP hearing, INEC had tendered five documents before the court through its lead counsel, A.B Mahmood which were opposed to by LP’s lead counsel Dr Livy Uzoukwu SAN, who objected to 3 out of the 5 documents.

The court however, admitted and tagged all of them as evidence.

Responding, LP Lead Counsel, Dr Livy Uzoukwu went on to state that he will like to tender some documents provided by INEC in response to a subpoena, but Justice Haruna Tsammani declined saying LP’s case closed, last week.

During cross examination, INEC’s witness, Dr Lawrence Bayode was called up and during examination by AB Mahmood said he has been with INEC for 24years and deposed a Witness Statement on Oath (WSOO) on April 10th 2023, which was tendered, objected to by LP but admitted by court

Wole Olanipekun SAN (counsel for BAT/Shettima) later cross examined Bayode and the highlights where the latter accepted that blurred documents downloaded from IREV would not affect results forms EC8A; Images on form EC8As uploaded to iREV were irrelevant to result collation; and that he is aware of e-Naira introduced under Buhari in 2021 and that the app has been taken off Google play store to fix tech issues.

APC’s lead counsel, Lateef Fagbemi SAN took his turn to cross examine Bayode where the witness admitted that physical forms EC8As were used by INEC to collate results; Glitches were experienced but did not affect result collation; and that Cloud Trail shows activities of patches that were deployed on e-transmission app.

Labour Party’s counsel, Mr. P.I.N Ikwueto SAN then cross examined the witness who admitted that e-transmission app was tested before use but not performance and functionality test, adding that the reports of the testing was received by INEC.

The results of the test was tendered by LP and admitted by court.

On whether E-transmission server was not vulnerable and performance test done pre-production identified remediation to rectify high vulnerability in report, Bayode was silent, though he admitted that Amazon Web Service Cloud Trail has event time, event source, event name and AWS region where it was hosted.

In the afternoon session for hearing in the PDP/Atiku petition, INEC’s Director of Information Technology (IT), Dr. Lawrence Bayode was again called in to testify for INEC.

Under cross examination by PDP’s Lead Counsel, Chris Uche, Bayode admitted that only 31 per cent of the election results had been uploaded before INEC Nationmal Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu declared Bola Tinubu as winner of the February 25 election.

Chris Uche had asked for 20 minutes to cross-examine the witness, APC and Tinubu opposed, Court ruled in Atiku’s favour.

Chris Uche again asked that the INEC witness should be made to read some critical portions of the European Union’s final report on the presidential election, Tinubu, APC and INEC again opposed it but the judges again ruled in favour of Atiku and the relevant portions were read.

The INEC witness had told the court that there was a technical glitch that affected the uploading of the presidential election results but under Chris Uche’s cross-examination, he admitted the imaginary glitch was not reported to Amazon Web Services (AWS) by INEC.

INEC closed its defense in the petition filed by Atiku Abubakar and the PDP against the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.