A Presiding Officer during at February 23 presidential election went through cross examination Monday as he told the presidential election tribunal sitting in Abuja he personally transmitted results collated at his polling unit.
Adejuyitan Olalekan took the witness stand as the petitioners’ third witness for the PDP and its candidate Atiku Abubakar.
The two are by their petition challenging the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress.
Olalekan was led by the petitioners’ lead counsel, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), to adopt his witness statement on oath as his evidence-in-chief.
Under cross-examination by Buhari’s lawyer Wole Olanipekun (SAN), the witness said he was a lecturer at African Community of Inquiry College of Education in Enugu State.
“I did it myself as the Presiding Officer. I transmitted through the code provided by INEC,” Olalekan said.
But when asked by INEC’s lawyer, Yunus Usman (SAN), Olalekan said he did not have the name or the number of the server.
Asked by APC’s lawyer Akin Olujinmi (SAN), the witness said, “Without the code, you cannot make any transmission of results”.
But asked if he attached the code with which he claimed to have transmitted the collated results to his witness statement on oath, he said he did not but had it on his phone.
Responding to Olanipekun, the witness maintained that all the voters at his polling units voted via card reader as the machine worked perfectly.
He also said that INEC did not direct Presiding Officers to allow voters who could not be authenticated by the card reader machine to vote manually with their picture captured.