The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has
concluded its defence in the petition filed by Atiku Abubakar, presidential
candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
At the resumed court session on Monday, the INEC team led by
Abubakar Mahmoud called the sole witness, Lawrence Bayode, an assistant
director in the commission’s information technology department.
Led in evidence, Bayode adopted his witness statement and
was cross-examined by other respondents and the petitioners’ lawyers.
Responding to questions from Wole Olanipekun, counsel to
President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, the witness said
images captured on bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) machines required
data services for them to be uploaded to the INEC result viewing portal (IREV).
However, he added that whether or not photographic copies of
polling unit results captured by BVAS are transmitted manually or
electronically, the integrity of the election was not compromised.
The witness admitted that the presidential election was
“free, fair and in substantial compliance with the electoral act”.
Under cross-examination by Lateef Fagbemi, APC lawyer,
Bayode said the glitch on the IREV portal on the day of the election did not
affect the actual scores of the candidates as the results of each of them
remained the same.
He said INEC did not do an electronic collation of results.
The APC lawyer then presented a newspaper article wherein
INEC has given a pre-election notice stating that electronic collation of
results was not feasible.
The newspaper was tendered and admitted in evidence despite
objection from the petitioners’ counsel.
During further cross-examination, Chris Uche, Abubakar’s
counsel, presented the recently released report by the European Union (EU)
election observation mission in Nigeria.
In the report, the EU team stated that the elections exposed
enduring systemic weaknesses that needed to be corrected.
The EU faulted INEC for the operational challenges and
glitches experienced with the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) and the
result viewing portal, saying the discrepancies severely damaged public
confidence in the electoral body.
Atiku and the PDP are contesting Tinubu’s victory in the
presidential poll.
The petitioners closed their case on June 23 after calling
27 witnesses.
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