The legal teams of President Bola Tinubu, All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday vehemently kicked against the tendering in evidence of information that were extracted from the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, machines that were used for the conduct of the 2023 presidential election.
But the Presidential Petition Tribunal proceeded to admit the documents as exhibits.
Other documents tendered by the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and admitted as exhibits by the court were results of the presidential election from Abia, Bayelsa, Kaduna and Ogun states.
Tthe certified results, which were contained in Forms EC8A, were downloaded by INEC from its I-Rev portal.
INEC’s lawyers opposed the admissibility of the downloaded election results.
Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima lawyer, Mr. Emmanuel Ukala, SAN, and APC’s , Niyi Akintola, SAN, also objected to the tendering of the results in evidence.
The court also admitted in evidence, results of the presidential election from eight Local Government Areas in Bayelsa state and marked them as Exhibits PK 1 – 8, with the certification document marked as Exhibit PK-9.
Despite opposition from Tinubu and others, the court admitted heaps of Forms EC8E series from 23 LGAs in Kaduna state.
Wole Olanipekun, SAN, challenged the admissibility of the certified copies of the BVAS print-outs tendered by candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar.
The documents were in in respect of 33 states of the federation, excluding Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Lagos state.
The documents were tendered by one of Atiku’s lawyers, Prof. Eyitayo Jegede, SAN.
INEC opposed the admissibility of the documents, except those from BVAS deployed to three states- Kogi, Sokoto and Rivers.
APC also opposed the admissibility of the printouts and like they did earlier on US Court records, they said they would give reasons for their objections, in their final written addresses.
Jegede, SAN, told the court that the documents were duly certified by INEC after all the necessary fees were paid.