INEC closes defence in Obi’s petition 

The Independent National Electoral Commission, on Tuesday, opened and closed its defence in Peter Obi’s petition challenging the February 25 presidential election wherein Bola Tinubu emerged as the president.

Among other reasons, Obi of the Labour Party is urging the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja to set aside Tinubu’s victory on the grounds that the Independent National Electoral Commission failed to comply with the electoral laws.

At the resumed proceedings on Tuesday, counsel for INEC, A.B Mahmoud, SAN, proceeded to close its defence in the petition after calling the first witness, Lawrence Bayode, an assistant director in charge of its ICT department.

Bayode had also testified yesterday in aid of the commission’s defence against the petition filed by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party.

He was led in evidence by the commission’s lead counsel, A.B. Mahmoud, SAN, who also tendered some documents in the course of the proceedings.

The witness, under cross-examination, said that even if blurred documents were downloaded from INEC’s Result Viewing portal, it will not affect the physical results as recorded in the polling units results, otherwise called form EC8A.

He said the images of forms EC8A captured with the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System and transmitted to IReV are not relevant for the collation of results.

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