TRIBUNAL: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS CONDUCTED WELL – PDP WITNESSES TELL COURT
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Three witnesses invited by Atiku Abubakar and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) testified on Friday that the election process went smoothly in the states where they worked as election officials.
Grace Ajagbonna, Abidemi Joseph, and Obosa Edosa, who testified as petitioners’ subpoenaed witnesses before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), said they were ad hoc staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and served as Presiding Officers in Kogi, Niger, and Edo states.
Ajagbonna, Joseph, and Edosa stated that the entire election process went well where they served and that they had no complaints about any of the rules and regulations.
Ajagbonna, who appeared as the 14th witness of the petitioners (PW14), was led in evidence by the petitioners’ lawyer, Chris Uche (SAN), and adopted her written statement, which was admitted by the court after the respondents registered their objection to its admissibility and promised to give reasons at the final address stage.
During cross-examination by INEC lawyer Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), Ajagbonna stated that she accredited voters using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) equipment and followed all of the instructions given to them during training.
“The accreditation process went well. The voting process also went well. I collated the results and recorded them in Form EC8A by myself. I signed and the party agents also signed.
At the end of the whole exercise, I took the Form EC8A to the Ward Collation Centre and submitted it to the Ward Collation Officer,” she said.
Ajagbonna said all other aspects of the election process went smoothly except the transmission of the presidential election result.
“My Lord, to be sincere, I was not happy. I was not happy that I was not able to rltrasnmit the result of the presidential election. Everything else went peacefully. The election went well,” the witness added.
When asked if she wrote her statement herself, the witness said yes. She was however unable to explain what she meant by the word: “simultaneously.”
She said in the statement that she attempted to upload the Form EC8A and election results at the same time but was unsuccessful.
When Mahmoud asked what she meant by trying to upload Form EC8A and the outcome result at the same time, the witness responded she meant “continuously or one after the other.”
Under cross-examination by President Bola Tinubu’s lawyer, Yusuf Ali (SAN), Ajagbonna stated that all party agents signed the Form EC8A before she took the photograph with the BVAS device and afterwards sent it to the Ward Collation Center.
While being cross-examined by lawyer to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), Ajagbonna said, by their training, no election official or party agent was expected to leave his/her duty post during the election.
“By our training, no body else is allowed at the polling unit l, except the presiding officer, collation office, party agents, security officials and the voters.
“A collation officer or agent and others who were assigned roles are expected to stay at their duty posts during the election, not moving about,” the witness said.
Under cross-examination by Ali, Joseph provided similar evidence but added that they were told during training not to coerce any party agent to sign result sheets and that the decision to sign or decline was entirely up to the party agents.
Edosa stated that the election went well except for her inability to post the results at her polling station.
“I did the accreditation using the BVAS machine. The process of accreditation went very well. Voting went very well too. We sorted and counted the votes and recorded the scores in the Form EC8A.
“I entered the figures manually. After that, the party agents and I signed the Form EC8A. I tried to upload the result using the BVAS machine, but it failed.
“What I was to upload was the image of the Form EC8A, which I had filled manually. Form EC8A is the result sheet.
“At the end of everything, I took the Form EC8A to the Ward Collation Centre and submitted it to the Ward Collation Officer. Beside the transmission, the other processes went very well,” Edosa said.
Under cross-examination by Olujinmi, Edosa, like the other prior witnesses, stated that this was their first time using the BVAS device, which they had only seen during their pre-assignment INEC training.
Following the completion of Edosa’s testimony, Uche requested an adjournment, which the lawyers for the respondents supported, and the court continued the hearing until 10 a.m. on Saturday.
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