•As court watch video of EU criticising the presidential election

 

From Godwin Tsa, Abuja

Former vice president, Atiku Abubakar and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have disclosed their intention to summon the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC), Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu to give evidence in their petition challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu and his All Progressives Congress (APC).

The INEC boss would appear on subpoena together with the Secretary of the Commission, Mrs. Rose Oriaran-Anthony.

The duo who have been subpoenaed by Atiku’s legal team  are expected to appear before the court on Thursday, June 15,  with  some sensitive electoral materials, used for the presidential election.

Uche who informed the court of this development atTuesday’s session proceedings, did not however, disclosed the nature of documents the top INEC staff  would be required to tender.

He the information was necessitated by the need to put the repondents, especially Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) on alert.

In addition, he  explained that the decision to invite the INEC chairman and Secretary was informed by the constant objection to the tendering of  certified true copies of electoral documents in court by the legal team to the commission. counsel to the electoral body.

Meanwhile, the Justice Haruna Tsammani’s led five- member panel, lawyers and members of the public yesterday watched a video tendered by a star witness of the petitioner’s, Dr. Alex Adum Ter.

The witness, former Attorney General of Benue State and PDP situation room National Coordinator tendered the video evidence containing the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood and the European Union Observer Mission to Nigeria on the disputed election.

In his witness in-chief, Dr Alex Adum alleged that the election was marred by irregularities and non-compliance with the provisions of the  Electoral Act 2022.

The vidoe clip equally featured INEC’s Commissioner in charge of Voter Education, Mr Festus Okoye, who together with his boss,  assured Nigerians that presidential election results would be electronically transmitted to make the election credible and transparent.

Specifically, the first video featured Prof. Yakubu saying there was no going back on using BVAS for voter accreditation and transmission of election results in realtime.

In the second video, Festus Okoye said there would be no incidence forms on election day and that if BVAS fails to work, the election at such polling unit will be rescheduled for the next day while the third video showed the press briefing of the EU Observer Mission to Nigeria where its official, Barry Andrews, said there was a lack of critical planning and lack of transparency on the part of INEC regarding the transmission of scanned polling unit results to IREV. After the videos ended, Uche applied to tender screenshots of the IREV portal of INEC as at March 18 and March 19, as mentioned by the witness.

He also tendered the INEC CTC IREV report showing 9403 polling units uploaded as of March 1, out of 176,000 polling units.

INEC lawyer opposed the “so called” screenshots of IREV by the PDP while counsels to Tinubu and APC aligned with his objection, except for the one certified by the electoral umpire.

The court still admitted them while reserving ruling till judgement.