The People’s Democratic Party and former vice president Atiku Abubakar on Wednesday called their first subpoenaed witness who told the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) how the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) failed to transmit results of the disputed February 25 election real-time “as promised, The Sun reports.
It was his evidence-in-chief that for his quick intervention, some staff of the commission would have been attacked for their failure to upload results in real time.
The witness, Hon Ndubisi Nwobu, from Anambra State, who was an ad-hoc staff of the commission, gave his evidence amid objections raised by counsel to the respondents against his testimony.
Before his evidence-in-chief, lead counsel to the petitioners, Chief Chris Uche (SAN) tendered some electoral documents from 10 Local Government Areas in Kogi State.
He informed the court that his clients have three subpoenaed witnesses to testify in their petition.
However, immediately the witness entered the witness box and barely before he could take his oath, counsel to INEC, Mr Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, objected to the hearing of his evidence.
He informed the court that he was only served this morning with the statement of the witness and as such would have to study the statement in order to do a thorough cross-examination.
His position was shared by Tinubu’s lawyer, Chief Akin Olujimi, SAN, and APC’s lawyer, Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, who added that he was only served barely 20 minutes ago with the statement and has not seen what it contains.
Responding, Uche argued that with a subpoenaed witness, they were not supposed to front-load his statement to the respondents, adding that there was nothing strange in the statement of the witness to warrant an adjournment.
Uche pleaded with the court to take at least one of the subpoenaed witnesses so as to judiciously make use of the time allotted because the adjournment would eat into their allotted time.
Responding, the Chairman of the court, Justice Haruna Tsammani, proposed standing down the trial for 30 minutes to enable respondents to look at the documents and thereby cross-examined the first subpoenaed witness.
The suggestion did not however go down well with INEC, whose counsel, Abubakar insisted that the witness cannot be taken today 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 prepare adequately.
Following the respondent’s insistence, Uche urged the court to adjourn till tomorrow for the calling of the three subpoenaed witnesses.
Earlier in his evidence, Nwobu told the court that the election went smoothly in most polling units he visited including where he cast his vote but “magic started happening” at the ward collation centres.
According to him, the results of the election were entered into the forms EC8A at the polling units but were not transmitted in real-time into the IReV because of the failure of the BVAS machines.
He told the panel that but for his intervention some staff of INEC would have been attacked due to their inability to upload results in real-time.
“There was no real-time transmission of results as we were promised by INEC,” he said.
The trial continues Thursday.
