Mr. Hitler Nwala, a digital forensics expert, described how he discovered that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, erased results of the presidential election that took place on February 25 before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, which is located in Abuja, on Thursday.
As the 25th witness for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who is contesting President Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the presidential election, Mr. Nwala ascended the box.
The witness claimed during her testimony before the five-member panel, which was presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, equipment used to conduct the polls contained the results that were deleted.
Atiku and his party had demanded that evidence supporting their claim that the presidential election was rigged in Tinubu’s favor would come from the BVAS machines, which were utilized for voter registration and uploading of polling unit results.
Mr. Nwala claimed he was subpoenaed to attend as a witness in the case while being led in evidence by the petitioners’ principal attorney, Chief Chris Uche, SAN.
He testified in court that he especially examined and performed forensic testing on 110 BVAS used to conduct the presidential election in the Federal Capital Territory, or FCT, in Abuja.
He claims that, in response to his questions, the electoral board insisted that it had to remove the data from the BVAS in order to redistribute them for the March 18 governorship and state house of assembly elections.
However, during the witness’s cross-examination, INEC’s attorney, Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, criticized the witness’s report and emphasized that the 110 BVAS devices utilized for the election were insufficient to prove that the Commission had acted improperly.
While asserting that the witness’s sample size for writing his report was inadequate, Mahmoud, SAN pointed out that a total of 3, 263 BVAS devices were used during the presidential election.
He claimed that the sample the witness relied on for his report only made up roughly 3.5 percent of the total number of devices INEC deployed in the FCT and 0.06 percent of the total number of BVAS utilized nationwide for the presidential election.
Recall that INEC had stated that it would need to “re-configure” all of the BVAS devices used for the presidential election in order to utilize them for the subsequent round of voting.
President Tinubu’s legal team, led by Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, and the legal team for the APC, led by Prince Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, both urged the court to dismiss the witness’ report, claiming it was riddled with obvious flaws.
However, the petitioners’ attorney, Uche, SAN, argued that the witness’ testimony was extremely important to his clients’ argument because this election was the first to be technologically driven in the nation.
The petitioners presented bundles of certified copies of INEC’s Forms EC8A from 20 Local Government Areas, or LGAs, in Ogun state, from the Bar shortly after the witness was released by the court.
The documents were submitted via Mr. Eyitayo Jegede, SAN, a member of Atiku’s legal team.
Certified copies of the voting unit results (Form EC8A series) from 17 LGAs in Ondo State, 27 LGAs in Jigawa, and 20 LGAs in Rivers State were also submitted as evidence by the petitioners.
In its final written address, INEC stated that it will explain why it disagreed with the papers’ admissibility as evidence.
The petitioners were then given the opportunity to conclude their case, after which the Respondents would launch their defense. The court then decided to postpone further hearings until Friday.
