A witness for Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in the February 25th elections, claimed that “magic” was performed on Abubakar’s votes at several collation centres.
The witness, Ndubuisi Nwobu, suggested that the Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi, rigged the election in Anambra state.
According to the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission, Obi won Anambra state with 584,621 votes.
In contrast, Atiku Abubakar received 9,036 votes, and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress secured 5,111 votes.
Nwobu, who serves as the Anambra PDP chairman and the party’s state collation agent, testified before the presidential election tribunal on Wednesday.
He alleged that after counting the votes, presiding officers did not upload the results.
Although he visited roughly 30 of the state’s 4,720 polling units on election day, Nwobu claimed he was compelled to sign the election’s result sheet at the state collation centre.
Without his signature, he would not have been provided with a copy of the results.
Nwobu said, “I signed the result sheet when it was obvious that without signing, a copy would not be made available to me.
Results were entered at polling units. But, every effort made to get the presiding officer to upload it on IREV proved abortive.”
When asked if PDP agents signed the result sheets at polling units before their transport to the collation centre, Nwobu affirmed.
He said, “They were taken to the collation centre at the ward level. That is where the magic started happening.”
He also noted difficulties with presiding officers at polling units.
Nwobu testified that he had to step in at times to protect INEC officials from confrontations with voters and agents from other parties.
Even in certain instances, I had to intervene to ensure that some of the polling officers were not attacked by voters and other political party agents,” Nwobu shared.
Nwobu is the eleventh witness of Atiku Abubakar to testify before the five-member panel, headed by Haruna Tsammani.
