TheCable

Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), called witnesses to testify before the presidential election petition court on Thursday.

Atiku and his party are contesting the victory of Bola Tinubu as Nigeria’s president.

Joe Agada, the first witness, told the court that there were “rampant cases of manipulation of electoral records” by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the polls.

Agada, a retired army captain, served as PDP’s state collation agent in Kogi for the presidential election.

He said he was forced to append his signature on result sheets after INEC allegedly refused to avail him copies of the sheets.

“BVAS machines were manipulated during the conduct of the (presidential) election,” he said.

“I was forced to sign the collated result sheets in Lokoja.”

Agada said he visited over 20 polling units in two senatorial districts of Kogi state and watched how forms EC8A, EC8B and EC8C were signed under duress by the PDP agents as a condition for them to be issued with the result sheets.

In his own evidence, Solarin Adekunle, PDP’s Ogun state collation officer, said he declined to certify the results in protest against election fraud.

Adekunle alleged that election results were inflated.

The third witness, Uzoma Abonta, told the court that the election was a nullity on account of “many irregularities, discrepancies and noncompliance” with electoral guidelines.