APC, AIT broadcaster argue over transmitting of 2023-election result.

Ijeoma Osamor, the host of the Democracy Today program on AIT, insisted on Friday that Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, did not say that the results of the presidential election on February 25 would no longer be uploaded and transmitted in real-time.

At the Presidential Election Petition Court, where the Labour Party and Peter Obi, its presidential candidate, are contesting the election results, Osamor disagreed with the attorney for the All Progressives Congress.

The fact that the commission, and more specifically, its chairman, broke his promise to upload the results sent to the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System to the INEC Results Viewing portal in real-time was one of the arguments made by the petitioners in support of their requests to invalidate the return of Bola Tinubu as president.

Until yet, the petitioners’ video proof has mostly consisted of clips of the INEC chairman assuring Nigerians that technology would be used in the presidential election.

On Friday, the court again allowed a flash drive as evidence and showed a video of Mahmoud giving a speech emphasizing the use of BVAS and IReV for the elections.

Osamor, who was summoned to appear in court, hosted AIT’s Democracy Today program, which broadcast the incident live.

Abiodun Owonikoko (SAN), counsel for the APC, questioned the reporter during cross-examination, asking if she was aware that the INEC chairman had released a press statement a few days prior to the poll declaring that the election results would no longer be uploaded in real-time.

Owonikoko SAN brought up the subject and mentioned that The Tribune had published something to that effect on February 23.

The reporter asserted, however, that she had attended the press conference and the collation center while covering the story, notably on the specified day.

Mahmoud, according to her, did not make the claim.

She added that although her news organization focuses on providing live coverage of events and programs, the newspaper article might have been based on a reporter interview.

The five-person court panel deferred to Monday, June 19 for a second hearing on the petition filed by LP and Obi after the witness was released.

In the meantime, Bola Tinubu was declared the winner of the February 25 presidential election by the electoral commission, but Dino Melaye’s national collation agent for the Peoples Democratic Party, Dino Melaye, informed the Presidential Election Petition Court that the outcome was rigged and incorrectly calculated.

Melaye provided testimony as a key witness in the suit filed by the Peoples Democratic Party and Atiku Abubakar, the party’s presidential candidate in the election, to have Tinubu’s declaration as the election’s victor annulled.

The witness, who was cross-examined by Atiku’s main attorney, Chris Uche SAN, claimed he declined to sign the final results because he didn’t want to take part in the fraud and malpractices that allegedly tainted the collation process.

He said the results of the presidential election “were wrongly computed by INEC.”

“I didn’t endorse it, because I don’t endorse fraud,” he stated.

In addition, he testified before the court that many other PDP operatives who participated in the presidential election did not sign the results at all levels.

Akin Olujimi (SAN), Tinubu’s attorney, questioned the witness, and the witness responded by asserting that “failure of transmission of what has been recorded is an infringement of the law.”

Additionally, he claimed that without the electronic transmission of results from the polling places to the INEC results viewing page, the election cycle could not be declared to have been completed.