*How late service of witnesses’ statements stalls hearing

*INEC, Tinubu, APC rattled as Atiku subpoenaes ad hoc witness set to testify

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) were on Wednesday morning rattled as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP’s) candidate in the disputed February 25 presidential election called its first subpoenaed witness at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PREPEC).

INEC, Tinubu and APC through their individual lawyers objected to the taking of the evidence of the witness who is said to be an ad hoc staff of INEC.

At Wednesday’s proceedings, the lead counsel to the PDP, Chief Chris Uche (SAN), after the admittance of exhibits from 10 local governments in Kogi State, called in one of its listed witnesses who gave evidence on how INEC failed to transmit results real time “as promised”.

Shortly after the end of cross examination of the witness, Hon. Ndubuisi Nwobu from Anambra State, Uche informed the court that the petitioners have three subpoenaed witnesses and went to call the first one, an ad hoc staff of INEC.

However, immediately the witness entered the witness box and barely before he could take his oath, the counsel to INEC, Mr Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN), rose in objection to the hearing of the evidence of the witness.

He informed the court that he was only served this morning with the statement of the witness and as such would have to study the statement in order to do a thorough cross examination.

His position was shared by Tinubu’s lawyer, Chief Akin Olujimi (SAN), and APC’s lawyer, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), who added that he was only served barely 20 minutes ago with the statement and has not seen what it contains.

Responding, Uche argued that with a subpoenaed witness, they were not supposed to front-load his statement to the respondents, adding that there was nothing strange in the statement of the witness to warrant an adjournment.

Uche pleaded with the court to take at least one of the subpoenaed witnesses so as to judiciously make use of the time allotted it because the adjournment would eat into their allotted time.

The Chairman of the PREPEC, Justice Haruna Tsammani, while trying to be considerate, proposed standing down trial for 30 minutes to enable respondents look at the documents and thereby cross examine the first subpoenaed witness.

INEC, however insisted that the witness cannot be taken today because the witness “is said to be an ad hoc staff of the commission” and as such, he would have to go and look at INEC’s records to enable him prepare adequately.

Following the respondents’ insistence, Uche urged the court to adjourn till Thursday for the calling of the three subpoenaed witnesses.

Earlier in his evidence, Nwobu told the PREPEC that the election went smoothly in most polling units he visited including where he cast his vote but “magic started happening” at the ward collation centres.

According to him, the results of the election were entered into the forms EC8A at the polling units but were not transmitted real time into the IReV because of the failure of the BVAS machines.

He told the panel that but for his intervention, some staff of INEC would have been attacked due to their inability to upload results real time.

“There was no real time transmission of results as we were promised by INEC,” he said.

The trial continues Thursday.

Similar incident occurred on Tuesday when proceedings were equally brought to an abrupt end owing to some defects identified in the schedule of documents filed by the petitioners.

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