The Delta State gubernatorial election tribunal yesterday admitted critical documents subpoenaed from INEC by Emerhor /APC while dismissing objections raised by Infeanyin Okowa, PDP and INEC against their admissibility.
The documents are;
1)Polling unit by polling unit card readers accreditation report
2) INEC April 2, 2015 Press Statement making accreditation through use of card readers mandatory
3) Manual for election officials 2015
4) Guidelines and regulations for the conduct of 2015 general elections
An Assistant Director in the ICT department at INEC headquarters and the Chief Planning Officer from the INEC office, Asaba tendered the documents. Although they came under intense questioning by counsels to the PDP and Okowa respectively, nothing could be done about the damning effect of their submissions; for instance, the final accreditation report indicates that 715,393 voters were accredited for the guber poll, while the result announced credited over 724,680 votes to the PDP candidate, Ifeanyi Okowa. The witnesses further affirmed that data, once captured by the card reader, cannot be tampered with, and that all tendered documents were duly certified by INEC. They also stated that the card readers recorded no malfunction in Delta State during the gubernatorial election and that the machines have three functions; identification of voters, verification of PVC holder and voter authentication.
Chief TJ Okpoko, counsel to Emerhor/APC, saved the day by putting up a strong defence of the admissibility of the subpoenaed documents against the strong objections of the respondents’ counsels. Citing authorities and paragraphs in the petition, he disproved the respondents’ claims that the documents were not earlier pleaded and that the accreditation report for the governorship election was duly listed. The counsel also proved that the certification of the documents were in line with section 104, subsection 2 of the evidence act contrary to the assertions of the respondents.
The tribunal has been on for 115 days out of a stipulated 180 days; it is likely that if the case continues in this fashion, the PDP just may relinquish its hold on yet another state, and very soon too! The figures as shown in the accreditation report and the eventual election result indicate clearly that the election which held in Delta on April 11 was neither free and fair, nor credible.
Will justice be served, especially for the people of Delta who are urgently in need of development? Events as they unfold in the coming days will tell.
