Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, indicated on Wednesday to call three electoral officers to testify for him at the ongoing hearing of the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja.

The three witnesses, who will appear on subpoena, were part of the ad-hoc staff engaged by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct the 25 presidential election.

Atiku, who alleged widespread irregularities and manipulations of results during the election, filed his petition at the court in March to challenge President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the disputed poll.

He asked the five-member panel of the court to either declare him the winner of the poll or cancel it and order a fresh one. Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who came third behind Atiku, who was took the second position, also submitted a petition with similar prayers to the court.

Atiku, whose case came up for hearing Wednesday, called his 11th petitioner’s witness, and was about to call his 12th when the respondents – comprising INEC, Tinubu, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) – objected to it.

The respondents’ lawyers – Abubakar Mahoud for INEC, Akin Olujimi for Tinubu, and Lateef Fagbemi for APC, became unsettled immediately they were told the witness invited to the box was a member of INEC’s ad hoc staff involved in the conduct of the presidential election.

The lawyers took their turns telling the court they needed time to peruse the witness statement of the subpoenaed witness, which they said was only served on them just before proceedings started on Wednesday.

Mahmoud also said he needed to cross-check the status of the witness from his client’s records.

Atiku’s lawyer, Chris Uche, said the witness was only one among three members of INEC ad hoc staff that had been subpoenaed to testify for the petitioners.

He said there was nothing strange the witnesses were coming to say in court, as he also insisted he needed not to frontload the witness statement of subpoenaed witnesses.

But the respondents’ lawyers insistently called for the postponement of the testimony of the witness to afford them enough time to prepare for cross-examination.

With the defence lawyers’ insistence, Uche conceded to an adjournment of the case until Thursday.

He gave no indication of what the three subpoenaed INEC ad hoc staff members would be coming to say in court.

But the witnesses’ testimonies may be crucial to Atiku’s case, which includes a contention that failing to promptly upload results to the INEC portal, known as IReV, after votes were counted at polling units was detrimental to the whole electoral process. The point is one of the pivotal issues in Atiku’s petition.

The petitioner’s legal team is also expected to try to extract favourable lines of testimonies to support their allegations of manipulation of results and widespread irregularities at various levels during the election.

PT