With the inclusion of these two witnesses, Abubakar has now called upon 18 witnesses out of the 100 he intends to present for the case.
Alongside his party, Abubakar filed petitions against the election of President Bola Tinubu and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), as well as the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), at the presidential election petition court in Abuja.
Their challenge is based on the assertion that INEC did not conduct the election in compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022.
During the hearing on Saturday, one of Abubakar's new witnesses, Alheri Ayuba, expressed her dissatisfaction with her inability to upload results from her polling unit to INEC's result viewing portal.
Ayuba stated, "There was a form that I filled at the ward centre, where I stated that I was not happy at my inability to transmit the result."
She further explained that she was unable to log into the INEC portal and believed that if she had been able to do so, the result might have had a "pending" status, which could have been uploaded once the network was restored.
The second witness, Sadiya Haruna, informed the court that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine she used malfunctioned.
Haruna testified that the result she manually entered at her polling unit was what she presented to the ward collation officer, with party agents monitoring the entire process.
She claimed to have taken a photo of the manually collated result on the result sheet along with the BVAS machine, but she was uncertain if the machine retained the image.
During the hearing, the counsel representing INEC, Kemi Pinheiro (SAN), and Akin Olujimi (SAN), the counsel for Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, objected to the admission of the witnesses' statements as evidence. The counsel for the APC, Abiodun Fashanu (SAN), supported their objection.
They stated that their reasons for objecting to the admission of the witnesses' statements on oath would be presented during the stage final addresses. However, they did not oppose the witnesses' invitation to testify in court or the presentation of their employment letters as Presiding Officers for the election by INEC.
Chris Uche (SAN), Abubakar's counsel, who led the witnesses in presenting their testimonies, urged the court to disregard the respondents' objections and admit the witnesses' testimonies.
Presiding Justice Haruna Tsammani reserved ruling on the objections until the final judgment. Further hearing in the petition has been adjourned until June 13.
(NAN)