The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has urged Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja to dismiss Atiku Abubakar’s challenging the outcome of the 25 February election.
The commission said the 27 witnesses he called to prove his petition fell far short 100 he proposed to call.
In its final written address in response to Atiku’s allegations of electoral fraud, INEC, through its lead counsel, Abubakar Mahmoud, told the court that Atiku called only 24 witnesses from over 176,000 polling stations.
Mahmoud, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), argued that 24 witnesses were insufficient to establish electoral malpractices in the 176,000 polling units across Nigeria where the presidential election was held last February.
He argued that by law, Atiku and PDP must prove through credible evidence from the 176,000 polling units that the non-use of the BVAS device to transmit the results real-time affected the outcome of the presidential election.
The lawyer further contended that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines, which Atiku alleged were not functioning properly in the 176,000 polling units in Nigeria during the polls, were not produced by the PDP candidate in support of his case.
Barrister Mahmud said all of Atiku’s witnesses testified before the five-member panel of the court that the BVAS device functioned adequately except for the uploading of images of the presidential election from the polling stations, which INEC argued did not detract from the election’s integrity and credibility.
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