A witness of the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar in his petition against the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu told the Presidential Election Petition Court on Friday that the real distortions of the Presidential election results of February 25, 2023 took place at the Ward collation centres.
The witness, Nicholas Msheliza told the court that it was a disaster at ward collation centres as officials of the national electoral body changed the results of polling units of the presidential election at the wards collation centres.
Petitioners lead counsel Chief Chris Uche SAN led the witness in evidence in Chief . Msheliza , a businessman and the Peoples Democratic Party,PDP,
Borno State Collation Agent in the February 25 presidential election further alleged that ballot papers and result sheets were manipulated by compromised Electoral officers in the various Ward collation centres.
The witness told the court that he was visited several polling units and saw where Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS were manipulated in favour of a particular party.
He said under cross examination, by Kemi Pinherio SAN who represented INEC that the election was peaceful, but added that BVAS usage were byepassed in ten local government areas of Borno state during the election in the state.
According to the witness, some PDP party agents were not allowed to do their work by INEC officials.
Another witness who testified on Friday, Sani Idris Kultigi said he served as PDP Niger state Collation Agent but did not sign the state election result because the process was fraught with irregularities.
Under cross examination by APC counsel Lateef Fagbemi SAN, the witness vehemently disagreed with the 375,183 votes allotted to APC and the 284,898 votes he claimed were allotted to PDP.He said that he declined to sign the result because of the discrepancies he observed in the result compared with the actual votes scored by the parties.
He however admitted that he did not state the said actual score of the parties in his statement on oath.
Another witness Silas Joseph Onu, a lawyer from Ebonyi state who also served as the state Collation Agent said that some of PDP agents were chased out from their posts during the election and the incidences were reported to the police.
Onu said that out of 2,964 polling Units in the state he visited quite a number of them and verified from PDP agents the report about the irregularities.
Under cross examination by Akin Olujimi SAN, who represented President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the witness said that the results of the presidential election in Ebonyi state was not transmitted from polling units to IReV which ought to have been the final stage of the election process.
When confronted with his claim in statement on oath that rigging took place in all the polling units, the witness said that he visited some polling units and not all the polling units .
The hearing has been adjourned to Monday ,May 5, 2023 for continuation,