An agent of the main opposition party from Borno State has told the Presidential election petition tribunal that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) connived with the ruling All Progressives Congress to ensure a fraudulent increase of over 1,000 polling units in the state, during the February elections.
The witness, Nickolas Shediza, a state collation agent for the Peoples Democratic Party, told the tribunal that although he knew that Borno State had a statuary figure of 3,933 polling units, the polling units were controversially increased to 5078 during the elections.
Mr Shediza also alleged that the number of votes declared to have been cast in parts of the state, 919, 786, was more than the number of accredited voters earlier announced by INEC for the area attributed to the votes.
The witness was, however, unable to state the number of accredited voters as allegedly announced by INEC.
In a report by This Day newspaper in February, the paper had quoted INEC’s resident electoral commissioner in the state, Mohammed Magaa’ji as saying that there were 3, 933 polling units provided by INEC across the 27 local government areas in Borno State.
The paper, however, added that there were over 2.3 million registered voters within the state.
Also in a similar testimony, another witness, Jaffaru Ibrahim told the court that the form EC8C contained “mutilated” result summed from wards and local government areas.
Mr Ibrahim, a lawyer, however, said he signed the form EC8C to prove that he was there when the “mutilated results” were controversially transmitted from the ward and local government result sheets to the form EC8C.
Premium Times
