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Atiku Abubakar’s witness on Friday advised the Presidential Election Petition Court docket in Abuja that the Impartial Nationwide Electoral Fee (INEC) defrauded the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Celebration (PDP) within the February election.
Atiku, who was PDP’s standard-bearer within the latest presidential election, is difficult President Bola Tinubu’s victory.
Mr Tinubu clinched Nigeria’s presidency on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
At resumed proceedings on Friday night, the witness, Nicholas Msheliza, advised the five-member panel of the court docket chaired by Haruna Tsammani that the alleged manipulation of the election in opposition to Atiku was perpetrated on the Ward Collation Centres in Borno State.
Mr Msheliza, led in his evidence-in-chief by Atiku’s lawyer, Chris Uche, stated PDP brokers have been manhandled and chased out of the collation centres.
Particularly, he narrated that after PDP brokers fled the collation centres, the election outcomes have been altered in favour of Mr Tinubu and the APC.
Mr Msheliza accused officers of the electoral fee of violating the Electoral Act by failing to transmit the election outcomes electronically because it had promised.
In his witness assertion on oath dated 21 March, the witness described the alleged manipulation of the polls as “actual catastrophe” that characterised the presidential election.
Cross-examination
Responding to Mr Tinubu’s lawyer, Akin Olujimi’s cross-examination, Mr Msheliza stated the election was held with substantial peace. However he added that Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines have been bypassed at Ward Collation Centres the place outcomes have been falsified.
In one other response to Mr Olujinmi’s enquiry, Mr Msheliza stated he didn’t identify polling items in his assertion on oath the place brokers of PDP have been prevented from performing their features.
One other witness, Sani Kutigi, advised the court docket that he withheld his signature to outcome sheets because of alleged discrepancies within the recorded votes on the polling items and people entered into the election types.
Mr Kutigi, a former member of the Home of Representatives from Niger State, stated he voted and acted because the State PDP Collation Agent.
He alleged that the precise outcomes recorded on the polling items weren’t those recorded within the Type EC8D; therefore, his refusal to endorse the falsified outcomes.
Underneath cross-examination by APC’s lawyer, Lateef Fagbemi, a SAN, Mr Kutigi stated he didn’t point out the precise figures on the polling items in his witness assertion on oath because of lack of area.
The sixth witness for Atiku, Silas Onu, alleged that PDP brokers have been harassed at polling items whereas some have been arrested and incarcerated at police stations whereas performing their duties on the collation centres in Ebonyi State.
Mr Onu, a lawyer, stated election outcomes falsifiers had a area day when PDP brokers fled the polling items to keep away from being killed by hoodlums sanctioned by state brokers to trigger mayhem.
Following the request of Atiku’s lawyer, Mr Uche, the court docket adjourned additional proceedings till 5 June.
Earlier, on Thursday, three witnesses testified for Atiku.
All of them alleged varied types of electoral fraud perpetrated by INEC in favour of Mr Tinubu.
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