A witness of Mr Peter Obi, and the Labour Party (LP) in their petition against the election of President Bola Tinubu, Mrs Mpeh Clarita Ogar, yesterday, told the Presidential Election Petition Court (PREPEC) that there was no “technical glitch” across all the six continents housing Amazon Web Services (AWS) on February 25, when the presidential and National Assembly elections held.
Ogar, who is the 7th witness of the petitioners, stated this in her evidence before the PREPEC sitting in Abuja.
INEC’s inability to transmit results of the presidential election real time using the Bi-modal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS ) unto its Results Viewing ( IReV) portals has been blamed on alleged technical glitches.
Amongst the three elections held on February 25, results of the Senate and House of Representatives were transmitted real time to the IReV with the exception of the presidential election.
The petitioners have continued to maintain that the BVAS was manipulated by INEC to produce a desired outcome, adding that the submission of the respondents that the inability of Presiding Officers to transmit the presidential election results was due to a technical glitch was untrue.
Led in evidence by Counsel to the petitioners, Patrick Ikwueto, SAN, the witness identified herself as a Cloud Engineer and Architect, currently working with Amazon Web Services Incorporated.
While adopting her witness statement on oath deposed to on June 19 at the registry of the court, a copy of her resume including her appointment letter from Amazon Web Services Incorporated and six volumes reports of the 33 regions, where Amazon Web Services hosted their servers, were tendered as exhibits.
Speaking on the witness’ statement on oath, Ikwueto, pointed out that the report on the health status of the AWS cloud services in the region showed that, there was no technical glitches on February 25, 2023.
Although the respondents all opposed to the admittance of the witness and her deposition, the court however allowed her and admitted the documents tendered as exhibits, and subsequently adjourned the matter to today for cross-examination of the witness.
However, the respondents predicated their objections on the grounds that they were served the deposition statement yesterday (Monday) in court and as such would be needing enough time to prepare for cross-examination.
Meanwhile, Obi and LP have accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of refusing to give them the documents they needed to prove their allegations against the conduct of the February 25 election that produced Bola Tinubu as president.
At the resumed hearing, Obi and LP represented by Mr Jibrin Okutepa (SAN) informed the court of their inability to get documents they required in their case from the electoral body in spite of the several letters written to that effect.
“This segment is to formally bring to the notice of the court, the excruciating experience we are having from INEC”, Okutepa said and added that, the electoral body released only few documents to the petitioners yesterday afternoon.
“We have done everything humanly possible, including persuasion and letter writing. We decide to seek the help of the court,” he said and further informed that the petitioners received a few copies of IReV reports from few Local Government Areas of Lagos that were certified on May 29 by INEC, which refused to make them available to the petitioners.
“We have consistently written letters to INEC, including the one I wrote personally on May 20 detailing all the documents we wanted,” Okutepa said and told the court that INEC refused service of subpoena from the bailiff of the court.
“This proceedings is time bound. We have paid for the documents and INEC is supposed to give us the documents that we need. We are crying to your Lordships as we have no where to run to. It appears that INEC is deliberately frustrating the proceedings,” Okutepa told the court.
Counsel to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) disagreed with the submissions of the counsel to the petitioners, adding that petitioners’ counsel did not discuss any issue with him before the commencement of yesterday’s proceedings.
He said, there was no reason to deny Labour Party any document, saying, there were procedures in obtaining documents from INEC.
“They didn’t want to follow the procedures. I’m taken aback with the submissions of Okutepa. We can’t sit here and be hearing lamentation that is unfounded,” he said and noted that he had replied to the letter by the lead counsel to the petitioners, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN).
The matter has been adjourned till Tuesday, June 20 for cross examination of the 7th petitioners’ witness and continuation of hearing.
-THISDAY
