Chrys
Ndubuisi Nwobu, a witness of Atiku Abubakar, has told the
presidential election tribunal that “magic happened to the votes of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) at the collation centre in Anambra state”.
Nwobu was the state collation agent of the PDP in the
February 25 presidential election in Anambra state.
He is also the chairman of the PDP in Anambra.
During proceedings on Wednesday, Nwobu told the court that
after the counting of votes, presiding officers refused to upload the results.
He also said he visited about 30 polling units out of the
4,720 polling units in the state on election day.
He said he was forced to sign the result sheet of the
election at the state collation centre, because he wouldn’t have been given a
copy if he didn’t.
“I signed the result sheet when it was obvious that without
signing, a copy would not be made available to me,” Nwobu said.
“Results were entered
at polling units. But, every effort made to get the presiding officer to upload
it on IREV proved abortive.”
When asked if result sheets were signed by agents of the PDP
at polling units before they were taken to the collation centre, Nwobu said
“yes”.
“There were taken to the collation centre at the ward level.
That is where magic started happening,” he said.
“There were problems at the polling units with presiding
officers.”
He said in some instances, he had to intervene to prevent
voters and other party agents from attacking INEC officials.
“Even at certain instances, I had to intervene to ensure
that some of the polling officers were not attacked by voters and other
political party agents,” Nwobu said.
Nwobu is Atiku’s eleventh witness to testify before the
five-member panel headed by Haruna Tsammani.
Subsequently, the petitioners sought to present three
subpoena witnesses before the court.
The respondents, however, asked the court for time to go
through the statements submitted to the court by the witnesses.
Abubakar Mahmoud, counsel to INEC, told the court they will
need to verify the identities of the witnesses and whether they truly
participated in the election.
The panel granted the request of the respondents and
adjourned the case to June 8.
Bola Tinubu, the standard bearer of the APC, was declared
winner of the February 25 election with 8,794,726 votes.
The outcome of the election is being challenged by Atiku
Abubakar, candidate of the PDP in the election, and Peter Obi of the Labour
Party (LP).
