BY Ahmad Sahabi
Abiye Sekibo, a witness of Atiku Abubakar, has told the presidential election tribunal that “agents of the All Progressives Congress” attacked voters and truncated the electronic transmission of results in Rivers state.
Sekibo was the coordinator of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) during the February 25 presidential election in Rivers.
He said officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were prevented from using the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) to upload results collated from polling units across the state.
“The agents of the 2nd respondent (Mr Tinubu) and 3rd respondent (APC) ensured that INEC presiding officers did not upload results of the presidential election in Rivers,” Sekibo said on Monday.
Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, had blamed “technical glitches” for the inability of the commission to upload results from polling units in real-time.
During cross-examination by Akin Olujinmi, lawyer of President Bola Tinubu, Sekibo said he voted at his polling unit at Okrika LGA of the state.
Lateef Fagbemi, APC’s lawyer, in his cross-examination, asked Sekibo how he was able to link the agents to APC.
Responding, Sekibo said he witnessed result collation in 20 of the over 600 polling units across the state, adding that he deduced the agents’ identities from their violent actions.
He said: “We tried to get to Obiakpor local government area but were prevented. There was violence and people were being killed.”
Sekibo is Atiku’s seventh witness to testify before the five-member panel headed by Haruna Tsammani.
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 Abubakar, presidential candidate of the PDP in the election, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP).
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