BY Bolanle Olabimtan
Lawrence Bayode, an assistant director with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), testified before the presidential election petition court on Tuesday.
These are the highlights from the tribunal session.
‘ONLY POLLING UNIT RESULT SHEETS RELEVANT’
Bayode told the tribunal that only the result sheets from polling units are used for the final collation process during elections.
The INEC witness said this while giving evidence in the petition filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
Obi and the LP are challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu.
Under cross-examination by Lateef Fagbemi, counsel for the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bayode said blurred documents downloaded from the result viewing portal (IReV) do not affect the polling unit results recorded in Forms EC8A.
He said photographic copies of Forms EC8A(polling unit result sheet) captured with the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) and transmitted to the IReV are not relevant for the collation of results.
Addressing the issue of glitches which occurred during the election, the witness said performance, functionality and vulnerability tests were conducted on the IReV before the election.
He said there was a possibility that an error could occur when sending the results from Forms EC8A to the portal.
However, Bayode told the court that the glitches recorded during the presidential poll did not affect the credibility of the results.
INEC CLOSES CASE IN OBI’S PETITION
After calling just one witness, Abubakar Mahmoud, INEC counsel, informed the court that the electoral commission would be closing its case.
Previously, Mahmoud had indicated that the commission would call three witnesses in its defence.
However, Bayode, a staff of the commission, was the only witness called on Tuesday.
The president and vice-president are expected to open their defence on Wednesday.
TINUBU OPENS CASE IN ATIKU’S PETITION
President Tinubu and Vice-President Kashim Shettima also opened their case in the petition filed by Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Tinubu through his lawyer, Wole Olanipekun, tendered several documents in evidence including his academic records from the Chicago State University.
A letter from the US embassy absolving Tinubu of any criminal allegations in the US was also tendered.
The senior advocate also tendered six copies of documents relating to immigration and visa records of trips made to the US by Tinubu between 2011 and 2021, among other documents.
According to Olanipekun, a witness would be called at the next tribunal session on Wednesday.
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