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President Bola Tinubu will on Tuesday, July 4, 2023 open his defence at the Presidential Election Petition Court,(PEPC) to defend his victory at the Feb. 25 presidential polls.
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.
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.
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One of the documents was a letter dated July 6, 2022, which Vice- President, Kashim Shettima,(the third respondent) wrote to the commission.
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The letter was the notification of his decision to withdraw his candidature for senate under the platform of the All Progressives Congress, (APC) for the Borno central senatorial seat.
Bayode who was 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 conducted in compliance with the Electoral Act, 2022.
The witness, also told the court that the technical glitch that occurred on the 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.
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According to Bayode, INEC does not have an electronic collation system and results of the presidential election were manually collated and not electronically collated.
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 to the election said that it would no longer be able to go ahead with the electronic transmission of results.
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