An expert called by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi as witness, Mpeh Clarita Ogar, stunned all on yesterday at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
She told the court not to have knowledge of the winner of the February 25 presidential poll in Cross River State.
Ogar, who described herself as a Cloud Engineer and Architect at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Incorporated, admitted being a member of the LP, on which platform she contested the House of Representatives seat in Yala Ogoga Federal Constituency of Cross River State in the last election.
AWS is one of the technology organisations whose services INEC utilised during the last election.
Ogar said she did not know the party that won election in her state because she was not in court to testify as an election expert, but as a Cloud engineer and architect.
On Monday, the petitioners tendered through the witness some reports in which she claimed that contrary to INEC’s claim that its system experienced glitches on the Election Day, no glitches occurred on AWS’s infrastructure.
She had also claimed that there were no glitches while during the use of AWS’ software.
Yesterday, the subpoenaed witness, while being cross-examined by lawyer to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettma, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), admitted that she had sued INEC before the last election following the rejection of her name and information by the electoral body.
She said her main complaint against INEC, in the suit, was that she tried several times to upload her information as a candidate on INEC site, but all her efforts failed because of network failure.
The witness also admitted that she stated in an affidavit supporting the suit that INEC’s site crashed. She however claimed that the crash of INEC’s site did not amount to glitches.
When confronted with information by Olanipekun that AWS had experienced system collapse many times in the past, the witness agreed that on February 28, 2017, AWS’ site experienced an outage for many hours.
She equally agreed that as at 2021, AWS was reported to have suffered more than 27 outages.
The witness also admitted that before she came to court to testify for the petitioners, she had attended before to witness proceedings in the case.
Under cross-examination by lawyer to INEC, Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), the witness said the subpoena issued on her was served on her personally.
Ogar said she was not in court in the authority of her employer, but as an expert witness of the petitioners.
Under cross-examination by lawyer to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ogar insisted that there were no glitches experienced in INEC’s system on the poll day.
At the conclusion of Ogar’s testimony, the Deputy Director, Department of Certification and Complaints in INEC, Mrs. Moronkeji Tairu, tendered the documents contained in the subpoena dated May 30 and issued on the INEC chairman on the request of the petitioners.
Mrs. Tairu said some of the documents required by the petitioners are not in the Commission’s office and that some of the documents come from INEC’s offices across the country and that because of lack of logistics, those documents could not be produced as at yesterday.
She added that the subpoena, dated May 30, was served on the commission on Monday and proceeded to hand other documents, including INEC’s manual for election officers to the petitioners and assured that more documents will be produced.
The petitioners, Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), told the court that INEC refused service of the subpoena all the while and all efforts to serve the commission proved abortive until Monday.
The Deputy Director, ICT Department of INEC, Dr. Lawrence Bayode, also presented some documents contained in the June 16 subpoena issued on the INEC chairman and informed the court that the rest of the documents are work in progress.
The court has adjourned further hearing till 2pm today.
Earlier during the hearing in their petition, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in the last presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, hinted of plan to conclude the presentation of their case tomorrow before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).
The leader of their legal team, Chris Uche (SAN) disclosed this at the resumed hearing in their petition yesterday.
Although the petitioners had, during the preliminary hearing in the case, indicated their intention to call 100 witnesses, they called 25 as at Monday.
Speaking outside the courtroom, Uche said the petitioners could still call five more witnesses to raise the total number of witnesses called by them to 30.
Uche said that some of the documents to be tendered in the remaining two days would take the place of the remaining 70 witnesses.
The senior advocate told newsmen after the proceedings: “We are closing our case on Thursday, it was supposed to end today (Tuesday) but because we lost two days, one of which was the June 12 public holiday, the court graciously extended our time by two days.”
During yesterday’s proceedings, Uche applied to tender documents, which he said were handed to them by the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) pursuant to two subpoenas served on him.
He tendered 14 bundles of voter register for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), which admission was objected to by lawyers to the respondents.
INEC’s counsel Kemi Pinheiro, (SAN), Oladipo Okpeseyi (SAN) for President Tinubu and Afolabi Fashanu (SAN) for the All Progressives Congress (APC), objected to the admissibility of the documents and promised to advance their reasons at the point of filing final written addresses.
The proceedings were however brought to an abrupt end when Uche moved to tender some bundles of certified true copies (CTCs) of election results, which he claimed was brought to them following second subpoena issued on INEC chairman.
The Presiding Justice of the court, Justice Haruna Tsammani noted that the documents were not properly arranged and marked for easy reference.
Uche blamed INEC for the state of the documents, claiming that the commission did not release the materials on time and was reluctant in release the others the petitioners requested for.
He added that it was getting difficult for them to get election materials from INEC to prosecute their case, adding: “getting materials from INEC is like getting weapons from an opponent.”
Uche suggested the creation of a separate body to always warehouse election materials immediately after election to allow easy access to such materials by petitioners.
Responding, Pinheiro faulted Uche’s claim, insisting that neither the INEC nor its officials has any reason to withhold election materials from petitioners.
Pinheiro accused the petitioners of not paying the required fees for the certification of the documents they planned to tender.
“The petitioners have not paid for certification. We brought these documents from across the country,” he said.
At a point, the court suspended proceedings for 10 minutes to enable the petitioners arrange the documents and mark them as required.
When proceedings resumed later, Uche told the court that parties have agreed that the petitioners return home with the documents, prepare a schedule of documents and mark them for tendering today.
THE NATION
