The Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate Peter Obi yesterday tendered 18,088 blurred polling unit result sheets and other documents at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
Their lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), tendered the documents through the petitioners’ fourth witness (PW4), Eric Ofoedu, a professor of mathematics at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.
The petitioners also tendered the witness’ analysis of some election materials, a copy of a February 20 letter by the LP engaging Prof Ofoedu to help the party analyse data on the February 25 presidential election and the subpoena issued on him.
Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), counsel for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) for President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettma, and Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) for the All Progressives Congress (APC), objected to the tendering of a majority of the documents.
They will adduce reasons for their objection at the final written address stage.
Earlier, Mahmoud, Olanipekun and Fagbemi faulted the petitioners for serving them with Ofoedu’s written statement a few minutes before the court sat, arguing that they ought to be served earlier to enable them to study the statement for the purpose of cross-examination.
It was, however, agreed by lawyers to both parties that the witness should be allowed to testify in chief and return today for cross-examination at 9 am, a position Justice Haruna Tsammani endorsed in a ruling.
The petitioners also called their fifth witness (PW5), Lumnie Edevbie, another subpoenaed witness, who described himself as an official of Arise News.
They tendered, through Edevbie, a flash drive containing a video recording of a presentation by INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu at the Chatham House, London.
In the video played in the court, the INEC Chairman spoke about his agency’s preparation for the last general elections.
He said INEC planned to deploy the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and upload polling unit results to the INEC results viewing portal (IREV).
Yakubu said the results on IREV would be the same as the polling unit result sheets (EC8A).
Another petitioner’s lawyer, Patrick Ikwueto (SAN), said he planned to show another video this afternoon.
Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) tendered some documents produced by Yakubu following a subpoena issued to him.
Yakubu delivered the documents through a staff of the commission, Mrs. Moronkeji Tairu, the Deputy Director, of Certification and Complaints, Legal Drafting and Clearance Department.
Among the documents produced by Mrs. Tairu, which the petitioners later tendered, is Form EC9 (affidavit in support of personal particulars), which President Tinubu submitted to INEC before the last presidential election.
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Also tendered were 37 copies of Form EC8D series (state-by-state election results), one copy of Form EC8DA (the final results on which declaration was made), copies of accreditation data from the BVAS machine in respect of Rivers State and accreditation data from the BVAS machine for the 36 states and the FCT.
Mahmoud, Olanipekun and Fagbemi objected to the tendering of the documents and promised to supply elaborate reasons at the point of filing their final written addresses.
Earlier, the three lawyers cross-examined the petitioners’ 21st witness (PW21), Samuel Oduntan, who claimed to be a statistician.
He was cross-examined on the three-volume report of analysis of election materials which he produced for the PDP and which was tendered through him by the petitioners on Wednesday.
The witness, under cross-examination by Olanipekun, admitted not to have played any major role in the case of Khalil v. Musa Yar’Adua.
Although Oduntan had listed the case in his statement as one of the cases in which he was engaged to analyse documents later he never played any role in the case.
Olanipekun said he participated in the case and that Oduntan never testified as a witness in that case.
The witness, who admitted that no images or photocopies of the electoral forms he claimed to have inspected were included in his report, said his focus was on just three out of the 18 political parties that contested the election.
Oduntan, who said he also inspected the election results in Adamawa, which was won by Atiku, told the court he was not satisfied with the irregularities noticed in the scores, including those allocated to Atiku.
Under cross-examination by Mahmoud, the witness said it was possible for his conclusion to be wrong if his primary data were defective, incomplete and inaccurate.
Oduntan also said it was possible to have a wrong conclusion where the methodology adopted was wrong.
He said he was engaged by the PDP to produce the report and was rewarded.
Under cross-examination by Fagbemi, Oduntan said he has been following INEC’s activities since 1999.
He said he conducted the inspection of the election materials in the presence of PDP representatives.
The witness said the result sheets he inspected were neither stamped nor signed.
Oduntan, who said he was aware that the BVAS machine was used for accreditation during the election, added he did not extract the date from the machine in the course of his assignment.
Further hearing in the petition resumes today at 3 pm.