Labour Party allegeINEC’s refusal to furnish them with documents
Written by Joey Shekwonuzhibo on June 20, 2023
The Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi yesterday, Monday June, 19th alleged that the Independent National Electoral Commission, refused to provide the documents they asked for.
Obi and the Labour Party are challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu.
The LP and Obi told the Presidential Election Petition Court that due to INEC ‘s refusal to provide them the documents they asked for, they cannot go on with their case.
Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN counsel for INEC, told the court that he received a letter dated May 15 from the petitioners and has not received any other letter after that.
The court urged them to come to a better understanding so that the proceeding can go on smoothly as they pledged in their spirit of cooperation.
Still at the tribunal, three presiding officers of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, yesterday, testified as witnesses in the case of former Vice President and candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, filed to nullify President Bola Tinubu’s election.
The trio, who took turns to mount the box owing to witness summons served on them by the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja, narrated how the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines failed them on election day.
According to the witnesses, whereas they were able to transmit results of the National Assembly election that was held on the same day, using the BVAS machines, however, their repeated efforts to electronically transmit results of the presidential poll to INEC’s IReV portal failed.
The three witnesses: Janet Turaki, Christopher Ardo and Victoria Sani told the court that they conducted the presidential election as Presiding Officers at Yobe, Bauchi and Katsina states, respectively.
Led in evidence-in-chief by a member of Atiku’s legal team, Eyitayo Jegede, SAN, the witnesses told the court that technical glitches they experienced with the BVAS machines frustrated their jobs on the election day.
