A witness of the Peoples Democratic Party and Atiku Abubakar, one Ndubuisi Nwobu on Wednesday alleged that his candidate was rigged out by Labour Party’s Presidential candidate, Peter Obi in Anambra state during the 2023 presidential election.
Nwobu, who is a PDP collation officer in Anmabra state, while testifying before the Presidential Election Petitions Court at the resumed hearing on Atiku’s petition, told the court that the election was peaceful in the state, but, magic happened to the votes of Atiku at different collation centres at the ward level.
“The problem was not at the polling units, it was at ward level that magic started happening”, he said, while also alleging that he was forced to sign the election result sheets for the state
Under cross examination by Mohmud Abubakar, counsel to the Independent National Electoral Commission, the witness decried that election results were delayed and not uploaded to the INEC Result Verification Portal.
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“I signed the result sheet when it was obvious that without signing, a copy would not be made available to me,” he said.
Nwobu, said he visited about 30 polling units out of the 4,720 polling units in the state during the election. He is Atiku’s eleventh witness to testify before the five-member panel headed by Haruna Tsammani.
INEC, Tinubu’s lawyers object to Atiku’s subpoenaed witnessess
Earlier, counsel to INEC, the Labour Progressives Congress and President Bola Tinubu objected to the presentation of Atiku’s three subpoenaed witnesses, who are election Adhoc staff during the elections.
INEC’s lawyer described the situation as an ambush, saying the petitioners lawyers only served him their witness statement today (Wednesday) and he would need time to study it and revert to his client.
Also, counsel to Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress opposed the calling of the witnesses, stating same reason as INEC’s, and applauding that the move is contrary to directive of the court, as contained in the pre-hearing report.
Chris Uche, Atiku’s lawyer however maintained that there was nothing surprising in what he did because he already stated in his petition that he would bring subpoenaed witnesses to prove the election was rigged.
He argued that with a subpoenaed witness, they were not supposed to front-load their statement to the respondents.
Justice Haruna Tsammani, therefore proposed standing down trial for 30 minutes to enable respondents to look at the documents and thereby cross examine the first subpoenaed witness.
The court then adjourned to Thursday for continuation of the hearing.
