Peter Obi: Professor Exposes INEC At Election Tribunal Over ‘Blurred Additional 2.5m Votes’ In 18,088 Polling Units
A professor of Mathematics at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Eric Uwaduegwu Ofoedu, has told the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting in Abuja that from the INEC Result Viewing Portal, IREV, 18,088 polling unit results were blurred but when compared with Form EC8As (polling unit results) given to Labour Party agents at the affected PUs, votes of 2,565,269 accredited voters were not reflected in the final results announced by the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Yakubu Mahmood.
This was contained in Ofoedu’s statement on oath admitted before the PEPC on Thursday after being lead to give his evidence in chief by the lawyer representing the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN.
In his statement on oath obtained by THE WHISTLER, the professor, who said he specializes in numerical functional analysis and data science, disclosed that the affected scores from the polling units which favoured Obi was recovered using LP agents EC8A copies and certified true copies of EC8As as supplied by INEC.
He said on February 20, 2023 he was engaged by the Labour party and was later subpoenaed to carry out a data analysis on the election results state by state.
“I observed that, from IREV portal, scores on Form EC8As of 39,546 polling units were inaccessible – contain uploads not connected with the Presidential Election.
“From IREV portal, 18,088 polling units results were blurred. This number of PUs negatively impacted the votes of 2,565,269 accredited voters and 9,165,191 voters that collected their PVCS,” he said.
According to him, overvoting checks on the 2023 presidential election showed that 4,457 polling units with a total of 2,317,129 PVCs collected were affected, adding that the figure exceeds the margin of lead of 1,807, 206 votes over the first runner declared by INEC, that is, Atiku Abubakar.
On the 39,546 polling units allegedly not accessible on IREV, Prof Ofoedu disclosed that both the number of accredited voters (5,532,553) and the number of PVCs collected (23,119, 298) exceeded the margins of lead by far from the INEC-announced results (1,807,206 over Atiku and 2,693,193 over Obi).
Citing Rivers State as an example, the witness said: “From results on IREV portal, LP got 208,564 votes while APC got 118,999 votes in Rivers state as against 175,071 votes for LP and 231,591 votes for APC as announced by INEC.”
In Benue state for instance, he said in the court document that a final vote count of 281,426 votes for Obi and 258,683 votes for Tinubu were obtained after he added actual votes on the Form EC8As obtained from LP agents in the state.
He observed that there was no correlation between the results declared by the INEC Chairman and what was available on the IREV portal or CTC of Forms EC8As from the polling units as supplied by the electoral umpire.
At the proceedings on Thursday, he asked the court to adopt his statement on oath while admitting his evidence as Obi’s exhibits against the 2023 presidential election.
But before he spoke, the legal team of INEC, President Bola Tinubu, and All Progressive Congress raised an objection, asking the court not to take his testimonies or admit his documents as evidence.
The five-man panel of the court led by Justice Hassan Tsammani noted their objections but directed the witness to go ahead and adopt his statement.
The witness, through Ikpeazu, tendered as his evidence, Reports of Data Analysis from the Results of the February 25, 2023, presidential election in Nigeria (IREV Scores Investigation alongside LP agents EC8A copies and CTC of EC8A from INEC), River state, Benue state among other documents.
The documents were again opposed by the respondents but the court admitted them while adjourning to Friday for cross-examination of the witness.
Recall that INEC said on March 1 that Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes while Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Labour Party had 6,984,520 votes and 6,101,533 votes respectively.
But petitioners contend that if the actual results from the 18,088 polling units are reflected and the alleged overvoting are deducted, the court would see he was the elected winner of the 2023 polls.
After that, the next subpoenaed witness called by Obi’s legal team was Lumic Edevbie, a Director of Operations, Arise News.
He tendered a video recording contained in a flash drive to the court as evidence.
The respondents objected to the video being played but the court noted their assertion but ordered that it be played.
It was admitted in evidence and the video was played.
The video showed when INEC Chairman, Yakubu Mahmood gave an address at Chatham House, London, saying that the result transmission real-time was the way to go and IREV was a secured archive of scanned polling unit results.
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