A witness testifying on behalf of Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential candidate of PDP in the February 25 presidential election, alleged at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal on June 7 that the Labour party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, manipulated the election in Anambra state to rig out Atiku.
During his testimony, Ndubuisi Nwobu, Atiku’s 11th witness, claimed that “magic happened to the votes of the PDP candidate at different collation centers in the state during the election”.
Nwobu, who is the Anambra PDP chairman and also the state collation agent of the party, disclosed that after the counting of votes, presiding officers refused to upload the results. He also emphasized that he visited about 30 polling units out of the 4,720 polling units in the state on election day, and was allegedly forced to sign the result sheet of the election at the state collation center because he wouldn’t have been given a copy if he didn’t.
“I signed the result sheet when it was obvious that without signing, a copy would not be made available to me. Results were entered at polling units. But, every effort made to get the presiding officer to upload it on IREV proved abortive.”
When asked if result sheets were signed by agents of the PDP at polling units before there were taken to the collation center, Nwobu said “yes”.
“They were taken to the collation center at the ward level. That is where magic started happening. There were problems at the polling units with presiding officers.”
He mentioned instances where he had to intervene to prevent voters and other party agents from attacking INEC officials.
“Even in certain instances, I had to intervene to ensure that some of the polling officers were not attacked by voters and other political party agents,” Nwobu said.
