As INEC Defends Tinubu’s Election in Court Today…

By Alex Enumah

The Independent National Electoral Commission, All Progressives Congress and President Bola Tinubu will from today present oral and documentary evidences before Presidential Election Petition Court to justify why Tinubu’s victory at the February 25, 2023 presidential poll must be affirmed, writes Alex Enumah.

A five-member panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PREPEC) presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, had on June 23, adjourned hearing till July 3, in three different petitions seeking the nullification of the election that produced Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President.

The five-man panel specifically adjourned to the said date for respondents in the various petitions to open their respective defences in the petition, shortly after the petitioners closed their individual cases.

The March 1 declaration of candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as winner of the February 25 presidential election has not gone down well with some of the contestants of the poll.

Out of the 18 political parties that fielded candidates for the election, five were strongly dissatisfied and hence, within the 21 days stipulated by law registered their greviances, at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PREPEC), the court of first instance for presidential election cases.

However, at the commencement of hearing on May 30, the Action Alliance ( AA) announced the withdrawal of its petition challenging the declaration of Tinubu as winner of the February 25 presidential election. Few days later, the Action People’s Party (APP) followed suit, thereby leaving the Labour Party (LP), the Allied People’s Movement (APM) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to go ahead in proving their allegations against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tinubu, Vice President, Kashim Shettima and his party, the APC, who are all respondents in the remaining three petitions pending at the PREPEC sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja.

INEC’s Chairman, Professor Yakubu Mahmood, had at the end of collation of results of the presidential elections on March 1, 2023, announced Tinubu of the APC as the winner of the presidential election.

According to him, Tinubu had polled a total of 8,794,726 lawful votes to emerged victorious. He was closely followed by candidate of the PDP, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who scored 6,984,520 and Mr Peter Obi of the LP who scored 6,101,533 votes to come 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Displeased with the declaration Atiku and Obi had approached the court to argue and prove that Tinubu did not win majority of lawful votes as claimed by the electoral umpire. They submitted that as at the time Mahmood announced Tinubu as winner, collation was ongoing since many of the presidential election results were yet to be uploaded unto the INEC’s Results Viewing (IReV) Portals. They also accused INEC of manipulating the process to favour the ruling APC and Tinubu.

Specifically, the petitioners predicated their grievances mainly on alleged irregularities, substantial non-compliance with the electoral laws, corrupt practices and Tinubu not being qualified to contest the election among grounds of double nomination of his Vice President, criminal forfeiture of a sum of$460,000, perjury and dual citizenship.

“The non-compliance substantially affected the result of the election, in that Tinubu ought not to have been declared or returned as the winner of the election”, Atiku submitted to the PREPEC.

In proving all these allegations, Atiku and Obi, called in a total of 40 witnesses and tendering a plethora of exhibits to prove their petition against the election of President Tinubu. While Atiku in his petition marked: CA/PEPC/05/2023 called in 27 witnesses to establish his allegations, Obi in his petition marked: CA/PEPC/03/2023, called in 13 witnesses. The witnesses on both sides included willing and subpoenaed; party agents; INEC’s adhoc staff who participated in the February 25 presidential election as well as experts.

Within the three weeks allotted Atiku and Obi to substantiate their allegations, they told through, INEC’s Adhoc staff how “technical glitches” at the point of uploading the captured presidential results to the IReV portal affected the expectations of the election.

They further maintained that the said technical glitches were related only to the presidential results as other results like the Senatorial and House of Representatives polls were electronically transmitted to the portal seamlessly.

Besides, the petitioners pointed out that the inability or failure to upload the presidential results in real-time was deliberate contrary to the allusion to technical glitches.

This was substantiated by a subpoenaed witness of the LP, Mrs. Mpeh Clarita Ogar, who told the PREPEC that there was no “technical glitch” across all the six continents housing Amazon Web Services (AWS) on February 25, when the presidential and National Assembly elections held. Ogar, claimed to be a Cloud Engineer, working with AWS.

Besides the testimonies of the witnesses, the petitioners presented before the court bundles of evidence such as polling units’ results, wards’ results, local government areas’ results, states’ results as well as the final result, which they said INEC manipulated to make Tinubu president. However, many of these results were blurred. According to Professor Eric Ofoedu, a Mathematics Professor and witness of Obi, over 18,000 result sheets uploaded to the IReV portal were blurred. He claimed the above fact was discovered at the end of his investigation and analysis of the February 25 presidential results uploaded on the IReV portal. Among the states he claimed his investigation and analysis were centered on are Rivers and Benue.

To prove further the allegation of non-compliance, both petitioners brought in video clips of the INEC chairman and a commissioner, Mr. Festus Okoye, assuring Nigerians of real-time transmission of results of the general election. The INEC boss could be heard in the video clip saying there is no going back on the use of BVAS machines and on real-time transmission of the results from the polling booths to the INEC Server.

As if corroborating Mahmood, the Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Mr Festus Okoye in his own interview also confirmed the two forms of collation of election results to include transmission from polling units, which would be taken physically to the Ward collation center.

Okoye had said “If there is a dispute, you refer back to the electronically transmitted results”.

So, when the five-member panel resumes today it behoves on the INEC, Tinubu and APC to present stronger arguments and evidence to convince the panel and indeed Nigerians that the claims of the petitioners are not true or strong enough to warrant the nullification of Tinubu’s victory.

The first to put up a defence, is the Independent National Electoral Commission, which conducted the February 25 presidential election as well as other categories of election recently. It is an understatement to say that INEC is at the center of the whole storm, having conducted the poll that occasioned the current legal battle.

Funny enough, INEC at the close of pre-hearing session hinted that it planned to call just two witnesses to disprove the allegations of the petitioners against the declaration of Tinubu as President-elect.

The question is would the evidence of these two witnesses be weighty enough when compared with the 41 witnesses of the petitioners? Recall that besides Atiku and Obi, the APM also called in one witness to prove its allegation that Tinubu breached the law when he nominated Shettima as vice presidential candidate, when his party, the APC had already nominated Shettima as Senator representing Borno Central Senatorial District for the Senatorial election which held same day with the presidential election.

Also, what documents would INEC tender to establish that it indeed did not violate its own regulations and guidelines for the 2023 general elections. How would the electoral umpire explain the over 18,000 blurred results it released to the petitioners to prove that the election was marred by irregularities, corrupt practices and non-compliance with the electoral laws.

Also, how would the electoral umpire contradict the testimonies of its own staff (Presiding Officers) who testified against the failure of the Commission to transmit the presidential election results real-time from polling units to the INEC’s IReV Portals.

While INEC may have difficulty in countering petitioners ‘witnesses and evidence especially the video evidence on INEC’s stance on electronic transmission of results, it would be more difficult for INEC to prove that a technical glitch indeed occurred on February 25, and why only on the presidential election results.

There is no gainsaying the fact that these same scenario confront Tinubu and the APC in defending their victory.

Although, Tinubu had announced that he will be calling 39 witnesses to defend his victory at the poll, his major task would be centered on issues raised about his qualification. He would be joined in this task by his party, the APC, which had also lined up 25 witnesses to establish their victory at the poll.

Recall that the petitioners through their witnesses and tendered documents alleged discrepancies in Tinubu’s academic records in addition to alleged criminal forfeiture. Atiku had through one Mike Enahoro-Ebah tendered Tinubu’s Chicago University Certificate, Certificate of the National Youth Services Corps (NYSC), a copy of South West College transcript, and the All Progressives Congress (APC) membership card.

However, while the name on Tinubu’s NYSC certificate bears Tinubu Bola Adekunle; on his South West College transcript, the column for gender stated the bearer as “female”. The documents were tendered alongside Tinubu’s Form EC9 the petitioners obtained from INEC.

Others tendered and also admitted as exhibits by the court are; a notarized judgment of a United States of America court for criminal forfeiture of asset said to belong to Tinubu; a certificate of Service from Mobil Oil Nigeria Plc, and a printout of his alleged Guinean passport.

Obi had at the commencement of hearing through his first witness, Mr Lawrence Uchechukwu Nwakaeti, gave evidence of how Tinubu allegedly forfeited the sum of $460, 000, over alleged complicity in drug deals. After adopting his statement, the witness then tendered a United States of America (USA) District Court judgment which allegedly indicted Tinubu on drug related offences and ordered his forfeiture of the total sum of $460,000 to the US.

Beyond objecting to the tendering of the documents as well as the evidence of the witnesses, the question is what superior documents and testimony would Tinubu and APC present to override that of the petitioners.

Do the respondents have any joker underneath their sleeves? Only the next few days can tell.