By Uche Mbah
The ongoing Buhari vs Atiku case at the Federal Court of Appeal in Abuja has pulled up several legal punches that promises a Coca-cola-pop-corn entertainment for Nigerians despite the seriousness of the case on issue.
The substantive suit, which started after weeks of legal fireworks on preliminary objections, took a bizarre turn when President Buhari, through his lawyer, Wale Olanipekun, objected to the admission in evidence of form CF001. This was the form containing his personal data he submitted to the Independent national Electoral Commission, INEC, in the wake of the 2019 presidential election. Olanipekun, however, said his reasons will be revealed at a latter date.
Also, the PDP chairman from Buhari’s home town, Katsina, Salisu Majigiri, had submitted that Atiku won the election in Katina but that INEC declared Buhari winner. Under cross examination, Majigiri said APC polled 872,000 while PDP scored 905,000. This is in contrast to the figures finally announced by INEC.
INEC has said that that PDP polled 160,203 votes while the APC polled 1,505,633.
“APC scored 872,000 and PDP scored, 905,000. These are our own results, we collated in our state not the ones from the server,” he said.
Atiku has tendered INEC final announced results, Newspaper reports of the statements by INEC Chairman, total number of voters, total number of collected Permanent Voter’s card, PVC. All these were admitted in evidence.
Ijeoma Obi, an IT expert in the employ of INEC, insisted she transmitted the results from the polling units to the INEC server.
INEC has claimed that the server was nonexistent.
Another withess, Adejuyitan Olalekan, also asaid that he transmitted election results to INEC server. “I personally transmitted election results to INEC server through the code provided by INEC. There was no instruction from INEC to us to allow election manually in case the card reader refuses to function,” he said.
Other witnesses also claimed to have transmitted the results to INEC server.
