The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has closed its defence in the petition by the Labour Party (LP) and it’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
INEC’s Lawyer, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), announced the conclusion of its case against LP at the resume hearing on Tuesday after presenting its sole witness, Dr Lawrence Bayode, a Deputy Director in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department of INEC and also tendering some documents as evidence.
At the hearing, the witness admitted that some of the results were downloaded from INEC’s portal. He also insisted under cross-examination that the results of the February 25 presidential election released by the commission are authentic.
But LP’s Lawyer, Patrick Ikwueto disagreed, saying the results could not be authentic when they were largely unreadable.
Under cross-examination, the witness said that even if blurred documents were downloaded from the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV), it would not affect the physical results as recorded in Forms EC8As which are not blurred.
“The images of Forms EC8A captured with BVAS and transmitted to IReV are not relevant for the collation of results, ” Bayode said.
He further told the court that the glitch recorded during the presidential election did not affect the collation of the results.