THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), yesterday, has opened and closed its defence in the petition by the Labour party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
The electoral body had on Monday, July 3, failed to commence its defence because of the absence of its witness scheduled for the day; hence adjournment to yesterday.
At the resumed hearing, INEC’s Counsel, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), announced the closure of the first respondent’s case after the conclusion of the testimony of its sole witness, Dr. Lawrence Bayode, a Deputy Director in its Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department, who told the court that he has worked for INEC for 24 years.
Before then, INEC had tendered some documents, which were admitted and marked as exhibits.
Under cross examination by Counsel for the petitioners, Patrick Ikwueto (SAN), the witness told the court that the testing of the software application for the election was carried out on February 4, adding that there was a report on the testing, but it was not with him in the court.
The petitioners, however, tendered the e- transmission saver Web and compliance form through the witness and was admitted and marked as evidence.
The witness told the court that the pre-production test was carried out before the election.
When asked if the hard copy of the results would be different from the ones in the IreV, he said no, adding, however, that anything could happen when sending the results from Form EC8A to the IreV.
He admitted that performance, functionality and vulnerability tests were carried out before the election and agreed with Ikwueto that the report of the e-transmission application identifies remediation to be undertaken to resolve the high vulnerability identified in the report.
The witness said he does not know INEC’s web address where its materials are published.
In his cross examination, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), Counsel for President Bola Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, asked if foundation and authenticity of any election by INEC is rooted in Forms EC8A and EC8E, to which the witness said yes, adding that blurred documents downloaded from INEC IreV would not affect the physical results in Form EC8A, because the image there is not relevant.
He said the election is concluded with the recording, snapping and sending to INEC’s IreV.
Answering questions from APC’s Counsel, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), the witness said the physical results are used for computing the election final results and that the glitches that occurred on the day of the election did not affect the collation of the results.
He added that if what was downloaded from the IreV are not clear, the physical results could also be obtained, saying that ECOWAS monitored the election, but he does not have their report.
The witness stated that the cloud trial log account of INEC could be obtained from Amazon Web Services (AWS), noting that this shows the patches that were deployed on e- transmission applications on AWS to fix the glitches that were encountered on election day.
After the testimony of the sole witness, Mahmoud told the court that INEC’s defence was closed.
Olanipekun later told the court that Tinubu and Shettima, who are listed as second and third respondents in the petition, will tomorrow open their defence.
The five-member panel, presided over by Justice Haruna Tsammani, adjourned until Wednesday, July 5 for Tinubu and Shettima to open their defence.
