4th July, 2023
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday countered Peter Obi’s argument of several results on IReV portal being blurred, saying that could never affect the physical results.
Testifying at the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja in defence of INEC, the commission’s witness, Lawrence Bayode, an assistant director in charge of its ICT department, stated that even if blurred documents were downloaded from INEC’s Result Viewing portal, it would not affect the physical results as recorded in the polling units results, otherwise called form EC8A.
He was being led by the commission’s lead counsel, A.B. Mahmoud, SAN.
Under cross-examination, Bayode explained that the images of forms EC8A captured with the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System and transmitted to IReV were not relevant for the collation of results.
The Punch reports that when examined by counsel for the All Progressives Congress, L.O Fagbemi, SAN, the witness told the court that the glitch recorded during the last presidential election did not affect the collation of the election results.
Obi had gone to the Presidential Election Petition Court seeking to overturn the victory of President Bola Tinubu in the 25 February, 2023 presidential election. He argued that the election did not follow the electoral law processes.
However, with its only witness, INEC told the court that it is closing its defense against Peter Obi’s allegations.