The Independence National Electoral Commission (INEC) has finally opened and closed its defence of Mr. Peter Obi’s petition of the Labour Party alleging widespread electoral fraud in the February 25th Presidential election, which saw the incumbent president Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerge.
Obi is praying to the tribunal to set aside the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the election because his declaration is not in compliance with the electoral laws.
The lead counsel to INEC, A.B. Mohmoud SAN, during proceedings on Tuesday called INEC’s first witness to its defence, one Lawrence Bayode, an official in the commission’s ICT department.
Bayode, under cross-examination, revealed that the blurred documents downloaded from the electoral empire’s Result Viewing Portal cannot affect the physical results that came from the polling units, which is the form EC8A.
Testifying further, the assistant director in the ICT department of INEC, said images of Form EC8A captured with the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System as transmitted to the IReV are inconsequential to the results’ collation.
While also being cross-examined by the counsel to the All Progressive Congress, he emphasised in the count that results transmission glitches experienced during the election did not also affect the collation process, stating that physical results can always replace any electronic materials not clear during the process.
The five-man panel of judges hearing all the petitions from the election is headed by Justice Haruna Tsammani of the Court of Appeal, and it is expected to deliver judgements in separate rulings in all the petitions.