Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a candidate for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who claimed that the 2023 presidential election was fixed, applied yesterday to summon Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to appear before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), which is located in Abuja.
Atiku, who finished second in the February 25 presidential election, also called INEC’s National Commissioner, Mr. Festus Okoye, and the Commission’s Secretary, Dr. Rose Oriarian-Anton.
Former vice president and PDP candidate said he will legally obtain subpoenas to compel the trio to appear before the court, provide testimony, and offer crucial election papers.
“My lords, we want to state that it has reached the point where we would summon the National Chairman of INEC, the Secretary of the Commission, and the National Commissioner to appear in court with documentation, so that the Respondents won’t allege that we caught them off guard.
“We had previously stated our intention to call them as subpoenaed witnesses, and we’ve reached the point where they might need to show up in this case.
Atiku’s lead attorney, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, informed the court, “We have already stated that we want them here, but by Thursday, we will make the formal motion.”
After they presented two more witnesses who gave testimony in court, Atiku and the PDP, the petitioners, decided to call the INEC officials.
It will be recalled that the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel approved five INEC ad hoc staff members who took part in the conduct of the presidential election to testify as witnesses in the case despite objections from President Bola Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
The five INEC ad hoc staff members acknowledged that the presidential election results were not communicated electronically in their individual testimony before the court.
The witnesses testified in court that while the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, devices successfully sent the results of the National Assembly elections, the process failed when they attempted to upload the results of the presidential election that took place on the same day.
They claim that the BVAS’s malfunction prevented the real-time transmission of the presidential election results to INEC’s I-Rev portal.
Meanwhile, during yesterday’s resumed proceedings, INEC informed the court that it had objected to additional witness statements Atiku and the PDP had submitted in support of their petition on May 20. According to INEC’s attorney, Mr. Abubakar Mahmood, SAN, the additional statements raised new concerns not mentioned in the original petition on the docket.
When the petitioners called Dr. Alex Adum Ter as their 19th witness, we objected on the grounds that the additional statements did not pertain to the petition but instead contained new information.
Your lordships withheld judgement on that matter, and we believe that this witness’ testimony connected to those pleadings.
As a result, we will have to raise an objection to the witness’s depositions that are being proposed for adoption right now.
