INEC Tenders Additional BVAS Machines at Edo Governorship Poll Petition Tribunal

•Opens defence Wednesday as Ighodalo closes case

Alex Enumah in Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), yesterday, tendered five additional Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines, used in the September 21 governorship election in Edo State.

The electronic devices, were tendered by a Senior Technical Officer, Mr. Anthony Itodo, in the ICT Department of INEC.

This is as INEC is due to open its defence before the election tribunal on Wednesday.

Following a subpoena order of the three-member panel led by Justice Wilfred Kpochi, INEC had last week tendered 148 BVAS machines used in 133 polling units in the September 21 governorship election.

The petitioners had anchored their claim against the outcome of the election on the alleged wrongful computation of results during collation at the ward and local government levels.

After taking five witnesses last Friday, the tribunal currently sitting in Abuja, adjourned to yesterday to enable the petitioners continue their case challenging the declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Monday Okpebholo as governor.

However, at the resumed hearing, the petitioners expressed satisfaction that they had established their case against the respondents, going by the testimonies of their witnesses and the plethora of documentary evidence brought before the three-member panel of justices.

Lead counsel to the petitioners, Mr. Robert Emukpoeruo, SAN, had informed the tribunal that they would be closing their case against the respondents.

Although INEC, Okpebholo and the APC opposed the admissibility of the five BVAS machines, the tribunal accepted them pending its ruling on their relevance to the case.

In all, the petitioners called 19 witnesses, which they saidwas very sufficient in establishing their case. Five of the witnesses gave their evidence of alleged over-voting after INEC brought in BVAS used in the areas where election results were being disputed.

Meanwhile, the tribunal has fixed Wednesday for INEC to open its defence.

In a related development, the Edo State Chairman of the PDP, Chief Anthony Aziegbemin, has expressed confidence that the petitioners through their lawyers had done justice to the case.  “We think the case is pretty straight forward. We think it is documentary-based. We think it is specific. We think the judiciary will give it some judicial cognisance of what we tendered before them.

“We believe that they have all they need from us and all what we should produce, I think we have given it to them. And we expect them to look at them and see how it goes. But suffices to say that it is not a petition as we used to have it in the country where you call a lot of witnesses.

“We didn’t need to call a lot of witnesses, we called the witnesses that we needed, to prove our case and make our case more solid,” Aziegbemin.