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The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has submitted the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines used in the last Edo State governorship election to the Governorship Election Tribunal.
Governor Monday Okpebholo of the All Progressives Congress, APC, had won the election held on September 21, 2024 after pulling the highest number of votes.
But the opposition like the Peoples Democratic Party had disputed the outcome of the election, stressing that its candidate, Asue Ighodalo won the poll.
However, INEC submitted the BVAS machines following a subpoena obtained by the PDP after INEC initially declined to release the machines voluntarily.
During Thursday’s proceedings, a PDP witness from Akoko Edo, who served as the Ward 9 collation agent, testified that while elections were conducted properly in the 13 polling units within the ward, the results collated at the ward level differed from those uploaded on INEC’s Result Viewing Portal, IREV.
The witness said a duplicate set of results was presented at the ward collation centre, which did not tally with polling unit records, prompting his refusal to sign the ward collation result sheet.
In a separate testimony, a collation agent from Oredo Local Government presented evidence that the final results declared by INEC in Ward 1 did not correspond with any polling unit results or the data uploaded on IREV.
In the other news, the Labour Party says it is not aware of any bribe alleged to have been paid to the leadership of opposition parties in Nigeria by the All Progressives Congress, APC, led government as alleged by former vice president, Atiku Abubakar.
The Eastern Updates recalls that Atiku, while speaking at a national conference on strengthening democracy held in Abuja on Monday, accused the ruling APC of offering N50 million each to some persons to instigate crisis in the opposition parties.
Reacting, LP in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Obiora Ifoh denied the claim, saying that the party’s leadership has “never received a dime from any individual, group, organisation or government who are not members of the Labour Party”.
