Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) on Saturday, watched a video recording by Channels Television showing the Independent National Electoral Commission Chairman, Yakubu Mahmood, assuring Nigerians that there would be “no going back” on using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines to accredit voters and transmit scanned polling unit results in real time.
The TV station was subpoenaed to produce the
live interviews granted by Mahmood and the electoral umpire’s spokesperson,
Festus Okoye, regarding their assurance about the functionality of the BVAS for
the 2023 election.
Counsel to INEC, President Bola Tinubu,
Kashim Shettima and the All Progressives Congress, raised objections against
the witness and the evidence sought to be admitted.
Ruling on their objections was, however, reserved
till the final judgment, as the court gave the go ahead for the video clips to
be played in open court.
Jubril Okutepa (SAN) who took charge of
proceedings for the petitioners, sought leave of court to play videos regarding
the election.
The first video that was played was when the
INEC Chairman held a meeting with political party leaders and other
stakeholders, saying “there is no going back on the deployment of BVAS for
voter accreditation and real-time transmission of results on election day.”
The next was the live interview Channels
Television had with Festus Okoye where he admitted that there were challenges
during the presidential election.
He was seen saying the Commission issued a
statement relating to the inability of presiding officers to upload results
from BVAS to IRev, adding there were technical glitches.
Okoye added that those who had the knowledge
about the technical glitches had made their own explanation to the Commission.
He added that the four leading political
parties deployed over 100,000 party agents to the polling units and must have
been given duplicate copies of the polling unit results sheet.
The other video that was played was when
Tinubu announced Shettima as his running mate.
After the video evidence was played, INEC
counsel, Oluwakemi Pineiro (SAN), said he had no question for the witness.
Counsel to Tinubu, Akin Olujimi (SAN), asked
the journalist if the cameramen that recorded the video including the INEC
Chairman were still alive.
The witness responded in the affirmative.
The court subsequently discharged the
journalist from the testimony dock.
After the video exercise, Obi’s lawyer, Peter
Afuba (SAN), then tendered Certified True Copies of more electoral documents
from Benue State (EC40GBU).
The documents were objected to by the
respondents, but the court admitted them as evidence.
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