President Ahmed Bola Tinubu and his Vice, Senator Kashim Shettima, will open their defence on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, in the joint petition filed by the Labour Party’s Presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, and his party, challenging Tinubu’s declaration as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.
The five-member panel of Justices of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) fixed the date for Tinubu and Shettima to open their defence after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which conducted the disputed election, closed its case after calling only one witness.
After the evidence of INEC’s sole witness, Dr Lawrence Bayode, INEC’s Director of Information Technology (IT) department, and the adoption of his witness statement on oath deposed to on April 10, 2023, the lead Counsel to the electoral body, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), announced the closure of the case of the electoral body in the petition.
Leading the witness in evidence, Mahmoud tendered the cloud trail log report and certification as evidence. The court admitted the documents as exhibits and considered them read and demonstrated before the court.
Under cross-examination by Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), counsel to Tinubu and Shettima, the witness agreed that the foundation of any election conducted by INEC is the results recorded in Forms EC8As and that blurred results downloaded from INEC’s I-ReV will not affect the results recorded in Form EC8As.
The witness agreed with Olanipekun that the E-Naira, launched in October 2021, has not been activated due to technological impediments and that the E-Naira App had to be taken from the Google Play store to fix its technological glitches shortly after its launch.
He also agreed with Tinubu’s lawyer that elections are practically concluded at the polling unit when the presiding officers input election results into Form EC8As, announce openly to all parties and their agents, signs Form EC8As, and use the Biomodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machine to capture the forms.
Answering questions from counsel to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), the witness stated that it was the physical results in Forms EC8As that INEC used to compute the results of the Presidential election.
Dr Bayode explained that the glitches that occurred during the presidential election did not affect the collation of the election results, and if the information downloaded to I-ReV was unclear, physical results could be obtained to retrieve the required information.
Under cross-examination by counsel to the petitioners, Mr Patrick Ikwueto (SAN), Dr Bayode agreed that the E-Transmission application was tested on February 4, 2023, before it was deployed for use during the presidential election.
Ikwueto tendered the report of the test as evidence, and while INEC did not object to its admissibility, Tinubu, Shettima, and the APC objected to the document’s admissibility and promised to give reasons for the objection at the address stage.
However, the court admitted the document as an exhibit.
The witness agreed with Ikwueto that the report of the E-Transmission application identifies remediation to be undertaken to resolve the high vulnerability identified in the report.
After the testimony of the sole witness, Mahmoud announced the closure of INEC’s defence in the petition filed by Obi and his party against Tinubu’s election.
Olanipekun informed the court that Tinubu and Shettima, listed as the second and third respondents in the petition, will open their case on Wednesday, July 5, in defence of their victory in the February 25 presidential election.
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