‘APC agents attacked voters’ — Atiku’s witness tells court

 

Abiye Sekibo, a witness of Atiku Abubakar, has told the presidential election petition court that “agents of the APC” attacked voters and truncated the electronic transmission of election results in Rivers state.

 

Sekibo, who was PDP’s coordinator during the February 25 presidential election in Rivers, said officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were prevented from using the bimodal voters’ accreditation system (BVAS) to upload results collated from polling units across the state.

 

“The agents of the 2nd respondent (Mr Tinubu) and 3rd respondent (APC) ensured that INEC presiding officers did not upload results of the presidential election in Rivers,” Sekibo told the court.

 

Meanwhile, Mahmood Yakubu, INEC chairman, had blamed the inability of the commission to upload results from polling units on “technical glitches”.

 

During cross-examination by Akin Olujinmi, Tinubu’s lawyer, Sekibo said he voted at his polling unit at Okrika LGA of the state.

 

Lateef Fagbemi, APC’s lawyer, in his cross-examination, asked Sekibo how he traced the identities of the agents to APC.

 

Responding, Sekibo said he witnessed several results collation in 20 out of the over 600 polling units across the state, adding that he deduced the agents’ identities from their violent actions.

 

Sekibo, who is Atiku’s seventh witness to testify before the five-member panel headed by Haruna Tsammani, said “we tried to get to Obiakpor local government area but were prevented. There was violence and people were being killed”.

 

Bola Tinubu, the standard bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared winner of the February 25 election with 8,794,726 votes.

 

The outcome of the election is being challenged by Abubakar, standard bearer of the PDP; and Peter Obi, standard bearer of the Labour Party (LP).