The decision of the former Vice
President, Abubakar Atiku to bring subpoenaed witnesses into the hearing of his
petition on Wednesday unsettled the Independent National Electoral Commission
(INEC), President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) who
jointly stood their grounds that the witnesses must not be allowed to testify
until June 8.
Atiku who was the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the disputed February 25 presidential
election, had called his first subpoenaed witness at the Presidential Election
Petition Court (PEPEC) to tender some sensitive documents but the move was
vehemently opposed.
INEC, Tinubu and APC through
their individual lawyers objected to the taking of the evidence of the witness
who was said to be an Adhoc staff of INEC.
At Wednesday’s proceedings, lead
counsel to the PDP, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, after the admittance of exhibits
from 10 local governments in Kogi State, called in one of his listed witnesses
who gave evidence on how INEC failed to transmit results real-time “as
promised”.
Shortly after the end of the
cross-examination of the witness, Ndubuisi Nwobu from Anambra State, Uche
informed the court that the petitioners have three subpoenaed witnesses and
went to call the first one, an Adhoc staff of INEC.
However, immediately after the
witness entered the witness box and barely took his oath, counsel to INEC, Mr
Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, rose in objection to the hearing of the evidence of the
witness.
He informed the court that he was
only served this morning with the statement of the witness and as such would
have to study the statement in order to do a thorough cross-examination.
His position was shared by
Tinubu’s lawyer, Chief Akin Olujimi, SAN and APC’s lawyer, Prince Lateef
Fagbemi, SAN, who added that he was only served 20 minutes earlier with the
statement and had not seen what it contains.
Responding, Uche argued that with
a subpoenaed witness, they were not supposed to front-load his statement to the
respondents, adding that there was nothing strange in the statement of the
witness to warrant an adjournment.
Uche pleaded with the court to
take at least one of the subpoenaed witnesses so as to judiciously make use of
the time allotted it because the adjournment would eat into their allotted
time.
Presiding Justice of the Court,
Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani while trying to be considerate, proposed standing
down the trial for 30 minutes to enable respondents look at the documents and
cross-examine the first subpoenaed witness.
INEC, however, insisted that the
witness cannot be taken and should not be taken because as the witness “is said
to be an Adhoc staff of the Commission,” he would have to go and look at INEC’s
records to enable him confirm the status of the witness and prepare adequately.
Following the respondent’s
insistence, Uche urged the court to adjourn till tomorrow for the calling of
the three subpoenaed witnesses.
Earlier in his evidence, Nwobu
told the Court that election went smoothly in most polling units he visited
including where he cast his vote but “magic started happening” at the Ward
Collation Centers.
According to him, results of the
election were entered into the forms EC8A at the polling units but were not
transmitted real time into the IReV because of the failure of the BVAS
machines.
He told the panel that for his
intervention, some staff of INEC would have been attacked due to their
inability to upload results real time.
“There was no real time
transmission of results as we were promised by INEC”, he said.
Meanwhile, further hearing into
the petition has been shifted till June 8.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com