INEC closes defence in Obi, LP petition, as Tinubu opens his July 5

By Vivian Okejeme, Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) yesterday, suddenly closed it’s defense in a petition by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Gregory Obi, against the outcome of the February 25 presidential election.
The electoral empire terminated its own defence in Obi’s petition after calling one witness and tendering four documents as against three, registered in the pre-hearing section.
In his evidence in chief, the witness, Dr Lawrence Bayode, admitted that INEC suffered glitches during the presidential election but maintained that the glitches did not in any way affect conduct of the election, collation of results and declaration of final results.
The witness who is a Deputy Director of Information and Communication in INEC, on the allegation of blurred result sheets said that clear result sheets can still be obtained on request by those in need of them.
Under cross-examination by counsel to Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Kashim Shettima, Wole Olanipekun SAN, the witness said the blurred results downloaded from IREV portal, as alleged by Obi, will not affect physical results as recorded in Form EC8A at polling units.
He said Olanipekun was right to say that the images uploaded on IREV are not relevant for collation of results
He said he was aware that the E-Naira application launched by the federal government on October 18, 2021 has not be activated due to technological issues.
On what amounts to complete electoral process, Bayode explained that election is practically completed when presiding officers record votes on Form EC8A, announces it , gives party agents to sign on it and then snaps the Form EC8A and upload on IREV.
Under cross-examination by lead counsel of the All Progressives Congress, Lateef Fagbemi SAN, the witness maintained that the Form EC8A was the primary source of INEC’s collation of results.
He said if what was downloaded from IREV is not clear, the physical results can be obtained.
During cross examination by counsel to Obi, Patrick Ikwueto SAN, Bayode said INEC’s e-transmission application was tested before it was deployed and the testing of the e-transmission application was done on 4th of February.
Ikweto SAN then tendered the INEC e-transmission testing dated February 22 as evidence and it was admitted as Peter Obi’s exhibits by the court.
Under further questions from Ikweto, the witness said “The e-transmission server was not vulnerable.”
He agreed that the AWS cloud trail log will contain the following features: Invent time,Invent source,Invent name, AWS region,Resource IP Address and Identity Access Management Address.
He was asked if Form EC8A is snapped on BVAS and uploaded on IREV portal, will the image be affected.