On Monday, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) accepted the final report of the European Union Election Observer Mission as evidence. The report criticized the conduct and outcome of the 2023 presidential election, which resulted in the victory of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and others.
The report was presented by Atiku Abubakar, the former Vice President and Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 presidential election. Despite strong objections from President Bola Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the report was admitted as an exhibit.
According to the European Union Election Observer Mission, the presidential election conducted by INEC lacked credibility, fairness, and transparency. The report highlighted concerns about the manner in which the election was conducted.
According to the report presented by INEC’s sole witness and Director of Information Technology (IT), Lawrence Bayode, only 31% of the presidential election results were uploaded to INEC’s result viewing portal.
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Bayode admitted in his opening statement that the electoral body does not have an electronic collation system for election results, so the presidential election result was not electronically collated.
The INEC witness specifically admitted that the collation of presidential election results was done manually by the electoral body’s presiding officers.
Under cross-examination by Atiku Abubakar’s lead counsel, Chris Uche (SAN), the witness admitted that, as of March 1, 2023, when Tinubu was declared and returned as the winner of the February 25 presidential election, not all of the presidential election results had been uploaded into INEC’s results viewing centre.
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While the witness told the court that there was a technical glitch that affected the uploading of the presidential election results, the witness admitted under cross-examination that the INEC did not report such a glitch to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Under cross-examination by Wole Olanipekun (SAN), President Tinubu’s lead Counsel, the witness told the court that Form EC8A served as the basis for the election results and that data and network service were required for the upload of the images of the results captured by the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machine.
He also testified that images captured on BVAS, whether transmitted electronically or manually, will not jeopardise the election’s integrity, particularly when results entered into Form EC8As are announced to the hearing and knowledge of party agents.
In response to another question from Olanipekun, the INEC Director stated that the presidential election results announced on February 25 in favour of Tinubu were free, fair, transparent, and in substantial compliance with the provisions of the law.
Under cross-examination by Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), lead counsel for the APC, the witness admitted that glitches occurred on election day but claimed that the glitches had no effect on the final results and scores of candidates.
INEC closed its defence in the petition filed by the former Vice President against Tinubu’s declaration as the winner of the February 25 presidential election with one witness and four documents tendered.
Meanwhile, President Tinubu has been ordered by the Presiding Justice of the Presidential Election Petition Court, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani, to begin defending his presidential election victory on Tuesday, June 4, 2023.
