This is in the petition filed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Abubakar Atiku.

Counsel to President Tinubu, Mr Wole Olanipekun, SAN, made this known on Monday after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) closed its case against Atiku after calling a lone witness.

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The electoral umpire opened and closed its case against the petitioners after calling the lone witness, Mr Lawrence Bayode and tendering some documentary exhibits in evidence.

One of the documents was a letter dated July 6, 2022, which Vice-President Kashim Shettima (the third respondent)  wrote to the commission.

The letter notified his decision to withdraw his senate candidature under the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform for the Borno central senatorial seat.

Bayode, led in evidence by INEC’s lead counsel, Mr Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, introduced himself as a Deputy Director of ICT for the commission.

Under cross-examination by Olanipekun, the witness asserted that the presidential election was free, fair, credible, and compliant with the Electoral Act 2022.

The witness also told the court that the technical glitch that occurred on election day did not affect the actual scores of the presidential candidates as manually computed by polling officers in the forms EC8As at the different polling units.

According to Bayode, INEC has no electronic collation system, and the presidential election results were manually and not electronically collated.

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For his part, counsel to the APC, Mr Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, confronted the witness with a publication in Tribune newspaper where the commission had, a few days before the election, said that it would no longer be able to go ahead with the electronic transmission of results.

The document was admitted in evidence amidst solid opposition from counsel to the petitioners, Mr Chris Uche, SAN.

While cross-examining the witness, Uche asked if he knew of the recently released European Union Observer Mission  Report on the Presidential Election.

The witness said he knew the report despite not reading it.

The respondents opposed the tendering of the document in evidence but reserved their reasons until the final address stage.

The court, however, admitted the document in evidence and marked it appropriately.

Uche showed the witness a certified true copy of the report and asked him to read a portion where the EU said only 31 per cent of presidential election results uploaded on the IREV were mathematically correct.

They further said this was evidence of how much training the commission gave polling unit staff.

The witness also read a portion of the report where the EU stated that the 2023 election was not as transparent and inclusive as had been promised by the commission.

The witness insisted that the technological innovations introduced by the commission into the electoral process were to guarantee transparency and integrity of the results.

Uche, however, insisted that there was no technical glitch on the day of the presidential election and that the only glitch was a human glitch or an INEC glitch.

After the witness was discharged from the witness box, counsel to INEC told the court that that was the case of the commission as they had no other witness to call or documents to tender.

Justice Haruna Tsammani, Chairman of the court’s five-member panel, adjourned the hearing in the petition until Tuesday.

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