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It was a bleak weekend for the ruling APC administration in Nasarawa state as its key witness, Alhaji Aliyu Bello, on Saturday gave a damning testimony of what happened at the March 18th governorship election.
Aliyu Bello who doubles as the Nasarawa State Secretary of the APC said that he was not aware of the existence of form ECG40PU, the requisite form through which INEC ought to have used in affected polling Units before ECG40(1) which INEC tendered on Friday to support it’s purported cancellation of all the 36 units of Ashige Ward.
He confessed to tribunal that based on Election Guidelines and Regulations of INEC, elections are only cancelled in the polling units not at the Ward or LG level as did by the electoral commission last March 18th during the Governorship poll in the state.
Aliyu Bello who was on the witness box as the 1st witness for the 2nd Respondent, A A SULE whose turn it is to defend the petition before the tribunal.
He claimed he knew nothing about INEC regulations and also tried to evade sensitive questions bothering the election and their opinion about the conduct of the 1st Respondent.
Sule’s lead Counsel, Chief Rotimi Adelodun (SAN) who tendered from the bar some documents which includes: 1-37 form EC8As of some affected polling units 2-Forms EC8Bs of 33 Electoral wards of seven Local Government Areas of the state. 3-Form EC8As of 29 polling units of some affected Areas which Governor Sule claims his votes were deducted by unknown forces.
PDP Lead counsel, Dr. Jibrin Okutepa (SAN) had raised a very fundamental objection to all the above mentioned documents as usual promised to give reasons for the objection during the written address.
However, Adelodun (SAN) called upon Aliyu Bello as Sule’s star witness. The state Secretary of APC tendered some documents which includes his voters card, APC membership card respectively. All these documents were objected by the PDP Counsel.
Bello further said that some APC votes were not properly collated by the INEC in both forms EC8As and EC8Bs.
During cross examination, even the first Respondent (INEC) insisted no vote was tempered with by INEC.
But Aliyu insisted that APC votes were reduced in so many polling units by INEC. He said that most of the APC results were wrongly calculated and captured. He denied that BVAS was used in any of these areas.
The APC witness agreed that elections are only won in the polling units base on Form EC8A results from the polling units. He also agreed that INEC BVAS IREV is the only source where results can be properly collated.
The APC witness said that he is not aware of the existence of form EC40 G PU and how it is uploaded, he is only aware of the form INEC tendered yesterday to support it’s declaration of Gov AA Sule.
The sitting was adjourned to Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 24th, 25th, 26th, August 2023 respectively.
