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Godwin Tsa, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari will open defence in the suit challenging his victory in the February 23, 2019 presidential poll today.
This followed the decision of the first respondent in the suit, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), not to call any witness to defend the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, ongoing at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The PDP had named INEC, Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC) as first, second and third respondent respectively.
The PDP is praying the tribunal to set aside result of the election in which Buhari was declared winner by INEC. The president is serving his second term.
At yesterday’s sitting, counsel for the commission, Yunus Usman (SAN), said his client (INEC) will rely on the evidence it obtained from the petitioners’ witnesses under cross- examination.
Although the Commission was given six days to defend the outcome of the election effective from yesterday, its counsel said there was no need calling witnesses to help the petitioners’ case.
“My Lords, will not be calling any witnesses to defend the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, against conduct of Feb. 23 election that re-elected Muhammadu Buhari as president,” he said.
“Our client will instead rely on the evidence it obtained from the petitioners’ witnesses under cross examination. There is no need calling witnesses to help the petitioners’ case as doing so would have negated INEC’s stance as impartial umpire.”
Responding, Buhari’s lawyer, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), requested to be allowed to open his client’s case at 2pm today.
APC’s lawyer, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), said his decision on whether or not to call witnesses would depend on the case to be presented by Buhari’s legal team.
The petitioners’ lawyer, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), thanked INEC’s legal team for not calling witnesses.
“I profusely thank my brother and friend for deciding not to call any witness,” he said.
By this development, INEC has closed its defence of the petition without calling any witness.
This has now paved the way for president Buhari who is the second respondent in the petition to commence his defence of his victory.
The petitioners had rested their case with 62 witnesses on July 19 after which the five-man tribunal led by Justice Mohammed Garb adjourned further proceedings till yesterday for INEC to open its defence.
While Atiku and PDP are contending that the result of the election was downloaded into INEC server, both the commission, Buhari and APC vehemently denied the claim.
The petitioners had, in their petition, stated that by figures obtained from the INEC’s server, they and not Buhari and the third respondent, the APC, won.
According to the figures allegedly obtained from the server, Atiku claimed he scored 18,356,732 votes as against that of Buhari, who he said scored 16, 741,430.
“The Servers from which the figures were derived belong to the first respondent, INEC. The figures and votes were transmitted to the first respondent’s presidential result’s Server 1, and thereafter, aggregated in INEC_PRES_RSLT_SRV2019, whose physical address or unique Mac address is 94-57-A5-DC-64-B9 with Microsoft Product ID 00252-7000000000-AA535. The above descriptions are unique to the 15th respondent’s Server,” Atiku and his party said.
Atiku and the PDP also alleged that the INEC chairman “committed grave errors in the final collation exercise” for the election by “falsely crediting” some persons with political parties, including “Okotie Christopher, Reverend Dr. Onwubuya and Ojinika Jeff Chinze.”
