A witness in the ongoing Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Abuja, yesterday, told the tribunal that the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, won the February 23 election in Katsina State.
Atiku and his party are jointly challenging the election of President Muhammadu Buhari.
At yesterday’s hearing, Atiku and PDP called 13 witnesses, making the number of witnesses called so far to be 19.
The former vice president and his party lined up 400 witnesses against President Buhari at the tribunal.
The 13 witnesses led in their evidence by Atiku’s lawyer, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), prayed the tribunal to void the election on reasons of malpractices.
The witnesses are Salisu Yusuf Maijigiri, Tanko Birchi, Salisu Garba Funtua, Abdusalam Idris, Aliu Umar Ustas, Ibrahim Musa, Audu Sanni, Balarabe Usman, Umar Alhaji, Ogunsanya Abiola, Uchenna Umeh, Abubakar Mohammed Wali and Bako Umar Kakanga.
Petitioners Witness 8 (Salisu Maijigiri), who is the chairman of the PDP in Katsina State, told the tribunal that Atiku defeated President Buhari in the state.
Maijigiri told the tribunal that he served as the party’s collation agent in the state for the presidential election in Katsina State.
Under cross-examination, by respondents’ counsel, Maijigiri said contrary to the results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the results collated by his party in the state showed that APC polled 872,000 votes while PDP scored 905,000.
But, the result INEC declared for the state showed that PDP polled 160,203 votes, while the APC polled 1,505,633.
Contradicting INEC’s result, Maijigiri said: “We (PDP) are the ones who won the election not APC. APC scored 872,000 and PDP scored 905,000. These are our own results; we collated in our state not the ones from the server.”
Petitioners Witness 17, Uchena Umeh, on his part, told the tribunal that as an Assistant Presiding Officer 1 during the presidential election in Gwarinpa, Abuja, he transmitted the results of the poll to INEC’s server.
Under cross-examination by Buhari’s counsel, Abubakar Mahmud (SAN), Umeh said he was a day before the election given the code with which he will use to transmit the result of the poll at his polling unit to INEC server.
He said: “In the course of the training, they told us there was an INEC server. A code was given to us and they told us that only APO should know the code.”
Responding to another question, he said: “It will be wrong to state that election would not be held in a polling unit if the card reader failed to authenticate a permanent voter card.”
Similarly, another witness who served as an Assistant Presiding Officer 1, Ogunsanya Abiola, told the tribunal that INEC did not disclose the name of the server into which the results of the poll were said to have been electronically transmitted.
Abiola further stated that INEC only gave them a confidential code with which to access the server. He said the code was issued early morning on the day of the election.
Under cross examination, counsel to INEC, Fabian Ajogu (SAN) asked the witness to give the name and the number of the server into which he claimed to have transmitted the results of the election in his polling unit.
Responding, Abiola said: “I personally transmitted the election information to INEC server. There is no name or number. We were only given a code with which to transmit the election information to the server.”
Asked if he indicated the code in his witness statement on oath, which he earlier adopted as his testimony, he said: “The code contains figures and letters. It was confidential and they said we should not disclose it to anyone.”
When asked, if he confirmed that it was not stated in the manual issued by INEC that it was the duty of APO 1 to transmit the results of the election, he said he and other polling officers were trained in the morning of the election and were thereafter issued the code before proceeding to the polling units.
“It was not stated in the manual that APO 1 should transmit results. They did not use the manual to train us. In the course of the training, they told us that since the APO 1 had access to the smart card reader, the APO 1 could transmit the election information. The RATECH trained us and that was when they issued the code to us.”
While being cross-examined by APC’s counsel, Funke Adegoke (SAN), Abiola also said in response to a question: “They trained us between 5a.m. and 6a.m. on the Election Day and that was when they issued the code with which to transmit the results to the server.”
There was however a mild drama, when Petitioners Witness 13, Audu Sani, told the tribunal that he could not remember the date of the presidential election.
Sani, who was the PDP’s collation agent in Lapai Local Government Area of Niger State for election, had alleged that there were incessant incidents of thuggery and sporadic shootings in many parts of the area, preventing and disrupting voting.
He said during cross-examination that he submitted the results he collated in his local government to the state collation agent of his party.
Counsel to APC, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) asked the witness when he submitted the results, he said he did on “the 26th.” Asked which month, he said “April 26”. Asked when the election held, he said “23rd.”
When asked to mention the month, he said: “I cannot remember.”
All the 13 witnesses had maintained that the presidential poll was characterized by rigging, allocation of votes to parties, use of thugs to cause mayhem, non-accreditation of voters, over-voting, cancellation and alteration of election results as well as the use of police to intimidate, harass and coerce voters in the four states of Katsina, Kebbi, Niger and Bauchi, where they voted and monitored the election.
They added that political thugs were used by the APC to chase away PDP agents, thereby making some of the agents not to sign some result sheets.
One of the witnesses, Salisu Garba Funtua, alleged over-voting on the Election Day because card readers were abandoned. He further claimed that the election was cancelled in several places due to the failure of the card reader.
Under cross examination by counsel to Buhari, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), the witness maintained that the election was not free and fair because of over-voting and other malpractices.
Another witness, Abdulsalam Idris, told the tribunal that Atiku and PDP never conceded defeat to Buhari and APC because the February 23 election cannot be called election in the full meaning of democracy.
Another witness, Aliyu Umar Ustaz, who was a local government collation officer for Atiku, alleged that the police connived with APC members to cheat the PDP.
Under cross examination by counsel to APC, Fagbemi (SAN), the witness emphasized that his party collated a detailed result, which is in the party’s custody.
In his own evidence, Tanko Birchi, a lawyer and businessman admitted that he was not physically present in all polling units, but received complaints in writing and verbal on the irregularities that characterised the election and that the complaints has been delivered to the party’s national secretariat.
Responding to a question from the APC counsel, the witness said that he heard that President Buhari was a General in the Nigerian Army and that he was in primary school between 1983 and 1985, when Buhari was a military head of state.
Abubakar Wali, under cross examination by INEC’s counsel, told the tribunal that he dismissed the election because it was marred with a lot of irregularities.
The witness who acted as agent of the two petitioners in Bauchi State informed the tribunal that those who carried out the alleged electoral malpractices were not put on trial by the police because they acted as agents of the APC.
The tribunal later adjourned till Thursday for continuation of hearing.