On Friday, Senator Dino Melaye, the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kogi State, appeared as a key witness in the petition seeking to invalidate President Bola Tinubu’s election.
Melaye took the stand as the 22nd witness in the case brought by the PDP’s presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja.
Under the guidance of Atiku’s lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, Melaye, who previously represented Kogi West in the Senate, informed the court that he had served as the National Collation Officer for the PDP during the presidential election held on February 25.
Melaye disclosed to the five-member panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani that he had refused to sign the final result used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to declare Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the presidential contest.
He told the court, “The said result was wrongly computed and announced. That was why I refused to sign it because I don’t endorse fraud.”
Upon cross-examined by INEC’s lawyer, Mr. Abubakar Mahmood, SAN, Melaye explained that though he voted in Kogi state on the election day, he immediately left for Abuja to perform the task that was assigned to him by his party.
He said that the PDP had agents in all polling units across the federation and that some of the them also did not to sign copies of election results in their locations owing to widespread electoral malpractices they observed.
“My lords, it is not true that all the agents signed results of the election across the federation. Not all of them signed. I may not give you the specific details or actual number of our agents that did not sign the results in protest,” he told the court.
He noted that as a lawmaker that was involved in the amendment of the Electoral Act, he knew that the law made it mandatory that results from polling units, should be electronically transmitted to INEC’s IReV portal.
Claiming that the result of the presidential election was manipulated, the Melaye, told the court that evidence at the disposal of the Atiku and the PDP, established that results of the election in the IReV portal, was different from what was announced by the INEC.
“My lords, exhibits have shown that result on the IReV was at variance with what was announced.
“What was brought to Abuja by State Returning Officers was totally different from what transpired in the states,” he added.
When asked if his evidence before the court was based on what he was told by other agents of the party, he said, “As a National Collation Officer of my party, I was just like the INEC Chairman, who even though he was not all over the country, but he still announced results he received from all over the country.
“So, my statement on oath before this court was based on what I personally experienced and reports from our agents, as well as from our Situation Room.
“We received information from agents all over the country and some of them were live feed, with the aid of technology.”
Asked if he would be surprised to know that his statement on oath was the same thing, word for word, with a statement by another witness in the matter, Melaye, replied: “My lords, there is no way I could know what another person stated. I don’t have celestial powers. I cannot be surprised about what I don’t know.”
On the allegation that INEC deployed a device management system that quarantined and allocated votes in Tinubu’s favour, Melaye, said he got to know about the said device through a press statement the INEC issued before the election.
“Physically, I did not see the mechanism, but I saw a statement released by INEC, where it narrated that scenario.”
Asked if he never considered that such allegation could be based on speculation, the witness, said: “With the statement coming from INEC, I do not see it as speculation.”
Asked how he got information to back his allegation that results of the election were manipulated in Borno, Benue, Kano and Lagos state, Melaye, said: “My lords, I was in those states, technically, because there was live feed from our agents and I was viewing what was happening.”
While also being cross examined by President Tinubu’s lawyer, Melaye, Chief Akin Olujinmi, SAN, the former lawmaker insisted that INEC’s failure to transmit results of the presidential election, was an infringement of the law.
However, he noted that ordinarily, delay in transmission of the results would not have posed a problem if they would not be manipulated along the process.
“Ideally, such delay is not supposed to change the results, but we can all see that this election was not an ideal situation.”
He told the court that the petitioners engaged a statistician that helped them to establish that the presidential election was rigged with “massive votes deducted” from Atiku.
Answering questions from APC’s lawyer, Mr. Afolabi Fashanu, SAN, Melaye, further maintained that “there were unlawful allocation of votes to the 2nd Defendant (Tinubu),” using a technology he said was imported from China.
Meanwhile, shortly after he was discharged from the witness box, counsel for the Petitioners, Chief Uche, SAN, tendered in evidence, certified copies of polling unit results from 13 Local Government Areas in Nasarawa state.
He told the court that though INEC was subpoenaed to produce the said results contained in Forms EC8A, from 26 states, it, however, only brought that of Nasarawa state.
More so, Uche, SAN, also certified copies of INEC’s Forms EC40G from Nasarawa state, which he said was the summary of polling units where elections did not hold, was disrupted or outrightly cancelled.
The Justice Tsammani-led panel adjourned further hearing in the matter till Monday.
