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From Abel Leonard, Lafia
The Governorship Election Tribunal sitting in Lafia, Nasarawa State, has admitted more election documents against Governor Abdullahi Sule.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and it candidate, David Ombugadu, had challenged the declaration of Sule and the All Progressives Congress (APC) as winners of the March 18 governorship election alleging irregularities, mutilation and inflation of election results in certain Polling Units and electoral wards of some local government areas of the state.
The Petitioners, PDP and Ombugadu, had through their Counsel tendered election documents and voters registers through an Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) staff, Mohammed Ibrahim.
The Tribunal admitted the documents which showed that election took place in the polling units in which Sule and APC claimed there were no elections.
Also, the petitioners had earlier caused subpoenas to be issued and served on INEC to produce and tender certain documents in support of their petition.
At the sitting of July 13, the petitioners’ legal team was led by J.S. Okutepa and J. J. Usman. The 1st Respondent’s (INEC) team was led by Ishaka M. Dikko, the 2nd Respondent’s (Alhaji Sule Audu) team was led by Adebayo Adelodun while Dr. Hassan Liman led the legal team of the 3rd Respondent (APC).
One of the subpoenas was issued by the Tribunal on the ICT Director of INEC/designated INEC Officer/Staff on 10th July, 2023 summoning the commission to produce and tender documents required for the Petitioners’ case.
Pursuant thereto, a representative of the INEC ICT Deputy Director Information, Communication/ Technology (ICT) produced CTC of BiVAS accreditation report and IRev copies of 3,242 polling units results of form (EC8As) at the ratio of 99.67 per cent of the results that were uploaded to the IREV which were tendered and marked as exhibits in the trial in line with the schedule of documents filed by the petitioners.
The hearing continued last Friday where another official from INEC, Lafia produced additional documents requested by the petitioners including CTCs of identified INEC forms EC8As, EC8Bs among which were equally tendered and marked as exhibits by the Tribunal.
The third INEC official who was in the Tribunal pursuant to another subpoena caused to be issued by the petitioners, however, told the Tribunal that the outstanding documents requested by the petitioners were not available. He, however, indicated that the documents would be made available at a later date.
The Tribunal after Saturday’s sitting adjourned its next sitting to Tuesday, July 25 for continuation of hearing after admitting documents from subpoena witnesses during its three days sitting in a stretch.
