Shina Peller, the Accord candidate for Oyo North Senatorial District, testified before the National Assembly Election Petitions Tribunal in Ibadan on Thursday that there were discrepancies in the results declared by INEC for the February 25th election. Peller’s counsel, Mr. Osita Mbamalu, was present for the cross-examination.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that Peller had filed a petition challenging INEC’s declaration of Sen. Fatai Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the senatorial district’s election, having received 90,074 votes. The other respondents in the petition are INEC, APC, PDP, and its candidate, Akinwale Akinwole.
Peller stated that the senatorial district has 13 local government areas, 134 wards, and 1,864 polling units, and that his party has agents in all the polling units. He said that some of his party agents came to the party’s situation room after counting the votes with the election results, while others did not come with it because they were not given it. He added that there were alterations to some of the results brought by his party agents, as well as mutilation. Peller concluded that the election was not free and fair due to the discrepancies.
Peller, while being cross-examined by the APC Counsel, Mr. Kazeem Gbadamosi, SAN, said that there were missing results in some council areas within the senatorial district. He also told the court that he disagreed with some of the results declared by INEC in some local government areas of the senatorial district due to the alterations, over-voting, and mutilation. Peller maintained that his calculations indicated that he had won the senatorial district’s election and that the result declared by INEC was incorrect.
Two other witnesses called by the petitioner’s counsel, Rasaq Kamarudeen and Festus Olamide, also testified that there was overvoting in some of the polling units they monitored. Kamaldeen, who said he worked as the party’s ward collation agent for wards 1 and 2 in Irepo LGA, informed the tribunal that scores were not recorded for Accord in some polling units.
