Opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate in the February 23, 2019 election, Atiku Abubakar, Friday, closed their case in their petitions challenging the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari.
This was after they called a total of 62 witnesses and tendered several documents to prove their allegations that Buhari did not win the election.
They are challenging the declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Buhari as winner of the presidential poll at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja.
In their petitions, PDP and Atiku asked the tribunal to nullify the victory of Buhari on the ground that the election was marred with irregularities, substantial non-compliance with the electoral laws, and widespread violence among other allegations.
In the face of these irregularities, the petitioners asked the tribunal to declare them winner of the election.
They anchored their call on results allegedly obtained by them from INEC central server, which, according to them revealed they scored majority of the lawful votes cast at the poll.
Though the petitioners had planned to call about 400 witnesses within the 10 days allotted to them to substantiate their claims, they were however able to call only 62 witnesses and tendered over 50, 000 documents to prove their case of alleged rigging, over voting, non-compliance with the Electoral guidelines.
Among the 62 witnesses called was a foreign Information, Communication and Technology ICT) expert from Kenya, David Ayu Nyango, and a local data analyst, Joseph Gbenga.
The ICT expects collaborated testimonies of some of the petitioners’ agents at the unit, wards, local government and state levels of the alleged abnormalities during the conduct of the presidential poll, which according to the petitioners’ last witness, Osita Chidoka., was the costliest election ever conducted by Nigeria.
Chidoka, who was the national agent for the petitioners and head of the PDP situation room told the tribunal that he refused to sign the result of the presidential election because of wrong entries through the manual system.
He insisted that results were transmitted into INEC server and that INEC chairman, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu confirmed the existence of a central server in a conversation with the national agents.
Earlier, the foreign ICT expert in his evidence alleged INEC has four websites from which he was able to generate information used in his analysis in his report to the petitioners.
He listed www.factsdontlie.com, whoistool, as some of the website he said though does not belong to INEC but the information therein were uploaded by an INEC official who is anonymous.
He said if authorised by the INEC chairman he can access the server and provide them with the name and number of the server.
The witness said that the information contained in the report of his analysis were extracts from three of the four websites.
The witness confirmed that “Fact.com was created on March 12, 2019, while the election was held February 23, 2019.”
On his part, Joseph Gbenga, the local data analyst, said that he analysed forms EC8A, EC8B and EC8C in 11 focal states of the federation on the instruction of the petitioners.
Among the last set of documents tendered by the petitioners, were INEC 2019 presidential election declaration results, report on all PVC used for the presidential election, record of card reader accreditation, summary of registered voters in polling units where election were cancelled, summary of collation at the national level and 36 copies of summary of results collation at the states level.
The tribunal has adjourned hearing to July 29, for INEC to open its defence.
Felix Omohomhion and Alex Enumah in Abuja
