From Godwin Tsa, Abuja

A staff of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Clarita Mpeh Ogah, yesterday, testified at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in the petition filed by Labour Party and its candidate, Mr Peter Obi challenging the result of the February 25 election won by President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In her evidence in chief, the witness a Cloud Engineer and Architect, told the court that nothing went wrong on INEC server on the day of the presidential election on February 25.

According to her, all the six regions where their services are hosted have been operational without issues including the United States, Aftica and many more.

The subpoenaed  witness, was called by the petitioners to prove to that electronic transmission of the February 25 presidential election results was not prevented by “technical glitches” as claimed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Led in evidence-in- chief by counsel to the petitioners, Patrick Ikwueto, Ogah who lives in Abuja and Maryland, United States, said she currently works with a tech company, Amazon Web Services Incorporated, AWS.

The Independent National Electoral Commission had engaged the services of AWS to secure the results of the 2023 general election.

However, the lead counsel to INEC, Abubakar  Mahmoud, told the court that he was given the witness disposition, including several reports, shortly before commencement of proceedings and would need time to study it.

After adopting her witness statement as PW7, she also adopted her resume and employment verification letter as an employee of AWS.

Also admitted were six reports showing the health status of AWS dashboard of cloud services in 33 regions and certificates of compliance.

Responding to the documents tendered by the witness, counsel to INEC, Mahmoud, said he has no objection to the witness curriculum vitae “but I do have objection to the so called letter of employment with AWS.”

counsel to Tinubu and APC objected to the tendering of the witnesses’ resume and letter of employment.

But the panel admitted her official documents including her reports as Peter Obi’s evidence.

After that, the legal team of Peter Obi and that of INEC were at each other again over inability of the former to access electoral documents domiciled with INEC.

A senior counsel to the petitioner, Jubril Okutepa SAN, told the court that INEC is frustrating his case because he has severally written to them and served them with subpoenas for all the electoral documents they require to prove their case but the electoral umpire “refused” to give it to the legal team despite paying for most of them.

He added in open court that INEC rejected copies of subpoena served on them knowing full well that “this is a proceedings that is time bound.”

“I have done everything humanly possible. This afternoon, INEC released a few IREV reports from Lagos (7LGAs) and Gombe (2 LGAs) states. These documents were certified on May 29,” Okutepa said.

But INEC’s lawyer, A.B Mahmoud SAN, denied it saying no new letter was brought to his attention and it is only one letter he received from Obi’s lead counsel, Livy Uzoukwu SAN, so far.

“I received a letter from Livy Uzoukwu dated May 15 and never saw any other one,” Mahmoud said, adding that INEC never denied them any documents and that documents that have been tendered by Obi so far came from INEC.

As counter accusations continued, lead counsel to Tinubu waded in by undertaking to meet with lawyers representing INEC and Obi and see how they can resolve their issues.

Meanwhile, the court led by Justice Haruna Tsammani told the legal team of INEC and Obi to cooperate with each other for the seamless conduct of proceedings.

“Before we rise, we appeal to both counsels to cooperate with each other. We are all friends and we are all Nigerians, and after this case, we will continue meeting.

“If we start playing to the gallery it will not help us, all we are interested in, is the justice of the matter.

“We want to deliver Justice and act fair so that if anyone abuses us we know that we have fulfilled conscience,” Justice Bolaji-Yusuf said.

Subsequently, the court adjourned the petition to today for continuation of hearing.