Court admits EU final reports on presidential election

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Court admits EU final reports on presidential election

The Independent National Electoral Commission on Monday called its first and sole witness, Lawrence Bayode to testify before the Presidential Election Petition Court.

The commission is responding to the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar in the February 25 presidential elections which produced Bola Tinubu as the president.

The petitioners are calling to question how the election was conducted by the electoral commission.

The court had fixed Monday, July 3 for INEC to open its case.

During the hearing, the court admitted as an exhibit the final report of the European Union Election Observer Mission on the conduct of the presidential election which it faulted

The report which was tendered by Atiku’s counsel, Chris Uche, SAN, through the witness stated that only 31 per cent of the presidential election result was uploaded into INEC’s result viewing portal.

In his evidence-in-chief, the INEC witness had admitted that the collation of the presidential election results was done manually by the presiding officers of the electoral body.

He stated that the electoral body has no electronic collation system for election results, hence, the presidential election result was not electronically collated.

Under cross-examination by Uche, SAN, the witness admitted that not all the presidential election results were uploaded into the IRev as of March 1, 2023, when the president, Tinubu was declared as the winner of the election.

He admitted that there was a technical glitch that affected the uploading of the presidential election results which was not reported to Amazon Web Services by the commission.

Under cross-examination by counsel to the president, Wole Olanipekun, SAN, he stated that images captured on Bimodal Voters Accreditation System whether transmitted electronically or manually will not affect the integrity of the election, especially when the results are announced to the hearing and knowledge of party agents.

He said the outcome of the February 25 presidential election was free, fair, transparent and in substantial compliance with the provisions of the law.

After the examination of its witness and subsequent cross-examination, INEC tendered four documents in aid of its defence.

The commission thereafter closed its defence in the petition filed by the PDP and Atiku against the declaration of Tinubu as the elected president.

Following this, the court headed by Justice Harunna Tsammani ordered the president to open his case in defence of his victory in the presidential election.