A witness of Atiku Abubakar, the People’s Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in the February 25 presidential elections, Ndubuisi Nwobu has revealed how his candidate was rigged out by Labour Party’s Presidential candidate, Peter Obi in Anambra State.
Nwobu told the presidential election tribunal, on Wednesday that “magic happened to the votes of the PDP candidate at different collation centres.
In the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission, Peter Obi scored 584, 621 votes in Anambra; Atiku polled 9,036 votes in the state and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress scored 5, 111 votes.
During proceedings, Nwobu who is Anambra PDP chairman and also the state collation agent of the party told the court that after the counting of votes, presiding officers refused to upload the results.
He also said he visited about 30 polling units out of the 4,720 polling units in the state on election day.
He said he was forced to sign the result sheet of the election at the state collation centre because he wouldn’t have been given a copy if he didn’t.
“I signed the result sheet when it was obvious that without signing, a copy would not be made available to me.
“Results were entered at polling units. But, every effort made to get the presiding officer to upload it on IREV proved abortive,” Nwobu said.
When asked if result sheets were signed by agents of the PDP at polling units before they were taken to the collation centre, Nwobu said “yes”.
“They were taken to the collation centre at the ward level. That is where magic started happening.
“There were problems at the polling units with presiding officers,” he explained.
He said in some instances, he had to intervene to prevent voters and other party agents from attacking INEC officials.
“Even in certain instances, I had to intervene to ensure that some of the polling officers were not attacked by voters and other political party agents,” Nwobu said.
Nwobu is Atiku’s eleventh witness to testify before the five-member panel headed by Haruna Tsammani.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, tendered in evidence on Wednesday the final results for the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
The national document known as Form EC8D was tendered by Paul Annanaba, SAN, on behalf of the party and Obi as part of the evidence in support of the petition protesting the outcome of the February 25 elections at the Presidential Election Petition Court.
Following no objection from the respondents, the five-man panel of the PEPC headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani admitted the national document as evidence in the petition by Obi.
In the same development, the petitioners tendered, as evidence in support of their petition against Tinubu’s return, form EC8Cs from 13 states: Bayelsa, Benue, Cross-river, Ebonyi, Edo, Lagos, Niger, Ondo, Oyo, Rivers, Sokoto, Ekiti and Delta.
The form EC8C is used for collating election results at the local government level.
The results recorded at ward levels are entered into this form. But the respondents, through their counsel, all objected to the admissibility of the form EC8Cs. They informed the court that they would explain the reasons behind their objections in their final written addresses.
However, the court admitted the forms in evidence and marked them as exhibits. Thereafter, it adjourned further hearings on the petition to Thursday, June 8, 2023.
Meanwhile, the PDP and its candidate in the last election, Atiku Abubakar, called its first subpoenaed witness at the Presidential Election Petition Court on Wednesday.
In a petition marked CA/PEPC/05/2023, Atiku and the PDP are challenging the outcome of the presidential election that produced Tinubu as president.
At the resumed hearing, counsel for the PDP, Chris Uche, SAN, informed the court that the petitioners are set to call their first subpoenaed witness, who is an ad hoc employee of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
However, counsel for the respondents in the case, INEC, Tinubu and the APC, objected to taking the testimony of the witness.
As soon as the witness entered the witness box, and barely before he could take his oath, counsel to INEC, A.B. Mahmoud, SAN, rose in objection to the hearing of the witness.
He informed the court that he was only served on Wednesday morning with the statement of the witness and, as such, would have to study the statement to enable him to carry out a thorough cross-examination.
Similarly, Tinubu’s lawyer, Akin Olujimi SAN, and APC’s lawyer, Lateef Fagbemi SAN, shared the same view and opposed the move by the petitioners.
Responding, Uche argued that there was nothing strange in the statement of the witness to warrant an adjournment.
He pleaded with the court to allow at least one of the subpoenaed witnesses to make judicious use of their allotted time.
The chairman of the five-man panel, Justice Tsammani, proposed to stand down the trial for 30 minutes to enable respondents to look at the documents and thereby cross-examine the first subpoenaed witness.
INEC counsel, however, insisted that the witness cannot be taken on Wednesday because the witness “is said to be an Ad-hoc staff of the Commission,” and as such, he would have to go and look at INEC’s records to enable him to prepare properly.
Following the respondents’ assertions, Uche urged the court to adjourn till Thursday, for the calling of the three subpoenaed witnesses.
