Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has asked the presidential election petition court (PEPC) to dismiss an application filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, seeking to have the proceeding televised.

Speaking with journalists after the tribunal pre-hearing session on Wednesday, Levy Ozoukwu, counsel to Obi and LP, said INEC opposed their application for a live broadcast.

“Surprisingly, INEC is objecting,” the senior lawyer said.

“A public institution that is being funded by the government and representing the people is saying they don’t want the people to enjoy live streaming. What are they hiding?

“INEC sees itself as a candidate in an election that it conducted. I say with every degree of emphasis going by the conduct of INEC.

“In court, no other party is complaining about not getting documents. Why is it so?”

“Only the petitioners who have not been provided with the required documents and I keep on asking, what is INEC hiding?”

Obi and the LP filed a petition challenging the victory of Bola Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the election.

In the petition marked CA/PEPC/03/2023, LP and Obi, said Tinubu “was not duly elected by the majority of the lawful votes cast at the time of the election”.

Amongst other allegations, they claimed that Kashim Shettima, vice-president-elect, had a double nomination in contravention of the electoral act.

The petitioners are asking the tribunal to declare Obi as the winner of the presidential poll or alternatively, order INEC to conduct a fresh election.

The tribunal has adjourned the matter to May 19 for continuation.

The Cable

Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party on Wednesday expressed anger over the telephone conversation between the United States Secretary of State, Antony Blinken and the President-elect, Bola Tinubu.

Blinken pledged stronger ties between the US and Nigeria during a 20-minute telephone call to Tinubu, who is in France.

The US Department of State spokesperson, Matthew Miller, in a statement said Blinken spoke with the president-elect on Tuesday.

The development came 24 hours after the Joe Biden administration announced the imposition of visa restrictions on Nigerians who allegedly disrupted the recently concluded elections.

The US said the affected persons were involved in voter threats, results manipulation, physical violence, and other activities that undermined democracy. The identities of the culprits were, however, not made public.

But dismayed by Blinken’s communication with Tinubu, PDP standard bearer, Atiku Abubakar, who is challenging the ex-Lagos State governor’s victory in court, said the Secretary of State’s assurances of bilateral cooperation contradicted the position of the US on the general election in Nigeria.

The former vice president was referring to a statement issued by the US government on March 2 in which it acknowledged the complaints and frustrations expressed by some Nigerians about the manner in which the presidential election was conducted and the shortcomings of the technical elements used in the poll.

Also, Chief Spokesman for Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, Yunusa Tanko, said it was worrisome for Blinken to be discussing bilateral relations with Tinubu.

During the phone conversation, Blinken said he was committed to further strengthening the US-Nigeria partnership with the incoming administration of the president-elect.

Miller said the two leaders “discussed the importance of inclusive leadership that represents all Nigerians, continued comprehensive security cooperation, and reforms to support economic growth.”

The statement read, “Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke this morning with Nigerian President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu to emphasise his continued commitment to further strengthening the U.S.-Nigeria relationship with the incoming administration.

“The Secretary noted that the U.S.-Nigeria partnership is built on shared interests and strong people-to-people ties and that those links should continue to strengthen under President-elect Tinubu’s tenure.

‘’Secretary Blinken and President-elect Tinubu discussed the importance of inclusive leadership that represents all Nigerians, continued comprehensive security cooperation, and reforms to support economic growth.”

Also, a statement from the Office of the President-elect, signed by Tunde Rahman, said Tinubu told Blinken that he would hit the ground running and unify the country on his assumption of office on May 29.

He further pledged to work to ensure continued positive relations with the US, adding that his immediate priorities would be to deliver institutional reforms and development programmes to deepen our democratic institutions and bring help to poor and vulnerable Nigerians.

But reacting to the US engagement with Tinubu on his verified Twitter handle @atiku, on Wednesday, the ex-vice president said he was in disbelief that the US top diplomat could give legitimacy to what he described as the sham election of February 25.

He tweeted, “I am in disbelief that Secretary Antony Blinken called Tinubu, a contradiction to the publicly stated position of the US on Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election.

‘’This is inconceivable considering that America, as the bastion of democracy, is well briefed on the sham election of February 25. To give legitimacy to the widely acknowledged fraudulent election in Nigeria can be demoralising to citizens who have hedged their bet on democracy and the sanctity of the ballot.’’

‘Call worrisome’

Faulting Blinken, Tanko said, “It is worrisome at this point to hear them discuss bilateral discussion at the point in which the issue of election is being challenged in the court of law.”

The spokesperson, however, stated that the discussion on the bilateral relationship should not be taken as an endorsement.

He said, “As we are concerned, we are aware that a statement was issued by those who have been part of the rigging machine in Nigeria’s electoral system. We don’t want to take issue with regard to any call being made to a government that is already seen to be illegal.

“We cannot gratify such statement as a kind of endorsement. We will rather call it a caution to see whether the judiciary will make do with what is already on their desk.”

But the All Progressives Congress saw the interaction between both Tinubu and Blinken as a welcome development.

Speaking with our correspondent, the Director of Publicity for the APC, Bala Ibrahim, said the majority of those criticising the US for its action needed some form of enlightenment on what ‘democracy’ and ‘bilateral relationship’ connote.

“I think these people (opposition) misunderstand the meaning of democracy. They should also learn the meaning of bilateral relationships. Once an election is conducted and there is a body that is charged with the responsibility of deciding or playing umpire in the election. If that body has made a pronouncement, it stands valid until it is vitiated by a court of competent jurisdiction.

“Nobody is saying people should not go to court to challenge an election outcome. But nobody should say the announcement by the electoral umpire is void simply because there are those who are challenging the outcome. The position of the law is that you are innocent until proven otherwise. And who alleged is burdened by proof. It is for him to prove the wrongdoing or the invalidity of the result.

“Now, while that is ongoing, it doesn’t mean countries should not have a bilateral relationship. Every country is a sovereign entity that cannot be challenged by individuals who have contested and lost elections. They should go and continue licking their wounds and allow the legal process to continue. Diplomacy and diplomatic relationship cannot be dictated by their own wishes. No, it doesn’t work like that.

“There is nothing wrong with Blinken calling the president-elect. It is actually in line. America is the bastion of democracy, the biggest democracy in the world and one country that has practised democracy longer than any country in the world knows the meaning of that better than any other democrat in the world. For Blinken to call and discuss with the president-elect, they know the implication and meaning. There is nothing undemocratic or bad about it.”

Punch

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russia fields new artillery system

Russia’s first-ever wheeled self-propelled howitzer, the 2S43 Malva, has successfully completed trials and will enter service, Director of Uralvagonzavod Aleksandr Potapov said on Wednesday.

The weapon has been described by the media as Moscow’s answer to French-made Caesar howitzers, some of which were delivered to Ukraine last year.

“Yes, the Malva should soon join [the troops]. Everything is fine with it,” Potapov told TASS news agency on the sidelines of the MILEX-2023 arms expo in Minsk, Belarus. 

Equipped with a 152-mm gun, the Malva (Mallow) is designed to fire at a wide range of targets, including enemy artillery batteries and armored convoys. It is more mobile and less expensive to produce than tracked systems.

The Russian authorities have ordered an increase in defense production in the wake of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, launched more than a year ago. Last month, Russia’s newest heavy tank T-14 Armata was first deployed to the frontline.

Kiev is currently gearing up for a much-touted counteroffensive that Ukrainian officials say will start in the nearest future. Ukraine has stressed many times that the operation’s success will heavily depend on the deliveries of weapons from the West.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Falling debris causes fires at two Kyiv sites, officials say

Falling debris during an air raid early on Thursday triggered two fires in the eastern districts of Kyiv, officials said.

Mayor Vitaly Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said one fire had broken out in a garage facility in the Darnitsya region of the capital. Debris also fell in the Dnipro region of Kyiv. He said there were no casualties from either of the incidents.

The head of Kyiv's military administration, Serhiy Popko, said on Telegram that a fire had broken out in non-residential premises in the Desnyansky district, just east of the capital. He provided no information on casualties.

Popko said Kyiv has been attacked by cruise missiles and that all of them were downed by air defences.

** Air raid alerts across Ukraine, military warns of strikes in Kyiv, other regions

Air raid alerts were declared throughout the territory of Ukraine early on Thursday and the military warned of possible Russian missile strikes in a wide arc extending from Kyiv to central regions and the south.

An hour after the warnings were issued, the Ukrainian Armed Forces Telegram channel told residents of the capital to remain in shelters. Warnings were issued for a range of other regions, including Zhytomyr west of the capital and Kirovohrad, Cherkassy and Dnipropetrovsk in central Ukraine.

The warnings also extended north of Kyiv and to the south and west to Vinnystia, Khmelnitskyi and Chernivtsi regions.

Other Telegram channels warned of possible strikes in the central region of Poltava and further south in Mykolaiv region.

A Reuters witness in Kyiv heard anti-aircraft units in action. There were also reports of explosions in other major cities, but it was uncertain whether these were from missile impacts or anti-aircraft activity.

RT/Reuters

UN seeks $3 billion for Sudan as fighting rages in Khartoum

The United Nations said on Wednesday more than half Sudan's population now needed aid and protection, as civilians sought shelter from air strikes and sporadic clashes between rival military factions in the Khartoum area.

Residents said power had been cut, food was in short supply, and drinking water scarce due to the violent power struggle, now in its second month despite international mediation efforts.

Launching an appeal for some $3 billion in aid, the United Nations said 25 million people needed help - the highest number ever recorded in Sudan, where around 15 million needed aid before the conflict.

Signalling no let-up in the conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), anti-aircraft guns and drones could be heard on Wednesday in the capital, residents reported.

"We have been moving from one place to the other in past days," said 27-year-old Abbas al-Sayyed, speaking to Reuters by phone from Bahri, a city adjoining the capital Khartoum, epicentre of a conflict that has killed hundreds of people.

"There is no electricity, no water at all, and even the bread we used to get in the first days of the war, we can’t get now. We can't move out," he said.

Clashes continued around Al-Jaili in Bahri, home to the country's largest oil refinery, residents said, and more violence was reported in El-Obeid in North Kordofan State, southwest of Khartoum.

The army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has been using air strikes and shelling in a bid to root out RSF fighters under the command of General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who are entrenched in residential areas of Khartoum.

On Tuesday the army released a video showing Burhan dressed in army fatigues with a rifle slung over his back, greeting troops at what appeared to be the army headquarters in Khartoum. Reuters could not immediately verify the video.

Across Sudan, the fighting has uprooted around 1 million people, 220,000 of whom have fled into neighbouring states.

Talks mediated by the United States and Saudi Arabia in Jeddah have so far failed to secure a ceasefire.

The sides agreed last week to a statement of principles on protecting civilians and allowing aid supplies, but arrangements for humanitarian corridors and agreeing a truce are still being discussed. Several previous ceasefires have failed to stop the fighting.

The conflict is likely to feature on the agenda of an Arab Summit hosted by Saudi Arabia on Friday. Sudan is expected to be represented by special envoy Dafallah Alhaj while Burhan, the de facto head of state, will remain in Sudan.

"We don't feel safe, we're in a state of fear," said Saad Eldin Youssef, a 45-year-old resident of Omdurman, a city across the Nile from Khartoum.

"The Rapid Support Forces are spread out on the ground around us and planes are carrying out strikes in neighbourhoods continuously."

'EVERYTHING IS RUNNING OUT'

Ramesh Rajasingham, head of OCHA in Geneva, said the appeal for nearly $2.6 billion for operations from May until October was the highest ever for Sudan. The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said it was seeking $472 million to assist more than 1 million people over the next six months.

With aid agencies unable to access the capital, the distribution of medical aid, food and fuel in the Khartoum area has fallen to local groups known as resistance committees.

"We did not receive any humanitarian aid from NGOs locally or internationally," said Mohammed Elobaid, an organiser in Omdurman, speaking in a recorded statement screened during the U.N aid appeal.

"What we can see here is that the situation is even going to get worse because medical supplies and food supply - everything is running out."

Burhan and Hemedti took the top positions on Sudan's ruling council following the 2019 overthrow of strongman Omar al-Bashir in a popular uprising. They staged a coup two years later as a deadline to hand power to civilians approached and began to mobilise their respective forces.

The conflict erupted after disputes over plans for the RSF to join the army and the future chain of command under an internationally backed deal for a political transition towards civilian rule.

Reuters

Fela Kuti’s 1976 album, Ikoyi Blindness, featured a track documenting an encounter within Nigerian social context where violence is trite. The song, Gba mi leti ki n dolowo (slap me make I get money), is an encounter between an “Oga,” the quintessential big man who personifies the impunity of power, and an unnamed person who represents the disempowered masses. In the song, Oga reaches out to slap the Unnamed’s face. Rather than quake before Oga’s almighty power, Unnamed stands up to him. He taunts Oga to hit him saying the “systems of government in Africa” would arise on his behalf and he would ultimately become rich. Oga, stumped by the unusual rebuff, freezes in mid-action.

Fela being the activist that he was, of course, spoke from the angle of the disempowered Nigerian. Yet, the exchange he described gave enough insight into the predicament of Oga petrified by the defiance of the Unnamed. For Oga who must have been used to dehumanising the poor with such gratuitous violence, this unexpected boldness denies him the assertion of his status of power he sought through the slap. Pulling back from landing that slap would diminish his might as an Oga who can do and undo. Yet, going ahead would be imprudent if the enactment of that violence on Unnamed truly has the potential to change his fortunes. Oga’s hand suspended in mid-air as he is forced to listen to Unnamed’s taunt of “gba mi leti ki n dolowo” captures an intriguing moment of power reconfiguration. What happens if the violence the powerful enacts on the powerless is miscalculated and does not dehumanise? What if it instead elevates the Unnamed to be social equals with the powerful?

If you have followed the news on Seun Kuti’s ongoing travails for assaulting a policeman, you would have understood why I am using his father’s wisdom to divine the oracle. Who could have imagined that nearly 50 years after Ikoyi Blindness, the “Oga” in the tale would be Fela’s own son while the voice of the powerless lustily challenging the powerful power abuser would be the Police—an institution that has relentlessly abused Nigerians? It is a strange inversion, but here we are, parsing the layers of irony woven into the unfortunate encounter of Seun and an unnamed policeman.

By now, virtually everyone who has seen the video of Seun accosting an officer, unaware he was being recorded. There might have been a legitimate provocation somewhere, but the recording only showed Seun confronting the police officer and eventually slapping his face very hard before being restrained by passersby. The slapped officer—wisely, or maybe out of sheer intimidation—never fought him back. The first time I saw that video I wondered what kind of èèdì spell they cast on Seun. In a world where anyone can use their mobile phone to capture other people’s most mundane expressions without sparing a thought for their privacy, why get into a public fight? There is no winning for the person who wears the known face in such a dirty exchange. So far, nobody knows the name of the officer; his photo or any identifying details have not even been shared. It is Seun, the famous face in that encounter, that has now become a reference point for assault on the police.

That slap was ugly, even for a society like Nigeria where virtually everyone is prone to casual violence in everyday life. Whatever that officer did, whatever trauma a uniformed police officer represented to Seun, the man was—and will always be—a living breathing human deserving of dignity. There is no justification for assaulting him. Fela’s Gba mi leti ki n dolowo wisely intoned a lesson for the powerful. When you are higher on the social elevation, restraining yourself from engagement with those on the lower rungs of the social ladder is not cowardice. No, you preserve yourself because you do not want your virtue to be so cheaply transferred from your body to a moral or social unequal.

Like “Oga” found out, engaging the one you thought was powerless and could be driven over can end up with you being sapped of your worth. In that moment when Oga’s hand was suspended mid-action, debating whether to slap or not, he was diminished either way. The person he proposed to slap to assert your “Oga-ism” has become richer for the experience. They might not get cash out of it, but they could get morally richer because Oga let down his social worth to get into roforofo with them.

Seun must have imagined that since many police officers are routinely abused by the very system that employed them, by the coterie of Nigerian big men that use them like slaves, they can be treated like animals. Well, given his present tribulations, he sure thought wrong. They will fight for their own, not because they believe in justice or are trying to assert the dignity of their officer—whom the police institution dehumanises in other ways—but because they have been handed a golden chance to extract value from the encounter at the expense of Seun (and other civilians).

You only need to consider how the Ogas at the Police headquarters have been spitting into the air and using their own faces to collect it to know that they have become richer at Seun’s expense. A whole Inspector General of the Police had to order his arrest! A case of assault that should be treated at the local police precinct has now become an opportunity for the police headquarters to extract some moral coins from Seun. Even the Police Service Commission waded into the matter as if such violence is not routine in Nigeria. Delta Police PRO Edafe Bright even swore Seun would “regret his actions.”

The way they are going about his prosecution makes you wonder when they became so efficient at addressing an assault. Even though Seun turned himself in at the police station, they still had to handcuff him and parade him to the public. Then they asked the court for a remand order to detain him for 21 days claiming that the assaulted policeman was in a coma at an undisclosed hospital. For the prosecutor to spin such cheap and unimaginative yarn, you know that this case has become an opportunity to make money from a slap. As if all that was not bad enough, they raided Seun’s house and seized his wife’s phone!

Make no mistake, the assaulted officer is the least of their concerns. They do not abhor violence against their officers; they just want to be the ones to do it. If the Police institution truly cared about its officers, they would have the least proven it by improving their material conditions. Seun handed them his derrière on a silver platter, unfortunately. He not only slapped an officer but had also previously made a video where he boasted that he had slapped police officers many times before because he was Fela’s son. That is a slight the police would not take lightly. With his own mouth, he nailed himself to their cross.

The top officers might not even bother with him, but you see the lowly ones who regularly endure ridicule in the hands of the Ogas they are regularly deployed to serve? They will humble him. His humiliation will validate their self-worth. They will not stop there. In the future, they will still use him to deflect accusations of police brutality. Slapping a police officer in Nigeria is a fantastic example of overreaching yourself and making your victim richer at your expense. Seun is a very good musician who plays his father’s music very well. Honestly, he should have listened to the songs too.

Punch

If you have an iPhone or iPad, you'll soon be able to hear it speak in your own voice, Apple announced Tuesday.

The upcoming feature,"Personal Voice," will give users randomized text prompts to generate 15 minutes of audio.

There'll be another new tool called "Live Speech" which lets users type in a phrase, and save commonly-used ones, for the device to speak during phone and FaceTime calls or in-person conversations.

Apple says it'll use machine learning, a type of AI, to create the voice on the device itself rather than externally so the data can be more secure and private.

It might sound like a quirky feature at first, but it's actually part of the company's latest drive for accessibility. Apple pointed to conditions like ALS where people are at risk of losing their ability to speak. 

"At Apple, we've always believed that the best technology is technology built for everyone," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO.

And Philip Green, a board member at the Team Gleason nonprofit whose voice has changed significantly since being diagnosed with ALS, said in the press release: "At the end of the day, the most important thing is being able to communicate with friends and family."

"If you can tell them you love them, in a voice that sounds like you, it makes all the difference in the world," he added.

It's not the first time Apple has ventured into the AI voice market, as iPhone users will be familiar with Siri. It uses machine learning to understand what people are saying.

And back in 1984, Steve Jobs was passionate about getting the Apple Macintosh 128K to say "Hello" in a voice demo at its unveiling. That was pretty advanced tech for the time, and was dramatized in a key plot point in the 2011 biopic about the late Apple cofounder.

It's not clear exactly when Personal Voice will be available, but Apple says it'll be before the end of the year.

Business Insider

It can take months or even years to recover from losing a key team member.

Employee turnover is always a stressful situation. For many businesses it can take months or even years to recover from losing a key team member, especially if you struggle with hiring and onboarding employees. So the best way to protect your business is to take steps now to increase employee retention and avoid having tofind a replacement in the first place. Here are my four tips to increasing employee retention for your small to medium sized business.

Acknowledge The Talent That You Have on Your Team

Finding good talent is a lot of work, and if you have someone who is really good at what they do, and you have invested time and attention in coaching them and helping them grow in their position, don't fool yourself into thinking that you are the only one that knows what you have. Recruiters, competitors and other businesses have been watching from the sidelines ready to swoop in when the timing is right. Their LinkedIn inbox is just a click away, and chances are they are getting emails daily asking them to change teams. So, the first step to keeping your team together is to recognize the star players within your ranks.

Encourage Them To Celebrate Their Progress

Once you have identified the start players on your team, it's time to get serious about celebrating and recognizing their victories and talents. If you have this already embedded into your company culture, you are already light years ahead of your peers, but if you find yourself chasing the next sale or goal and not acknowledging the hard work that went into getting there - you may want to re-think your approach. Taking the time to really feel our successes, goes a long way to helping someone feel fulfilled and appreciated in their role. So celebrate often!

Praise Them In Front Of Their Peers

Did your sales manager crush this quarter's sales goal? Did your operations manager find a way to cut your operating budget and save your company a lot of money? Did a customer service representative resolve an irate customer's issue, and sell them an upgrade? Celebrate! And tell the rest of the team about their victory. Take time each week to publicly praise your team in front of their peers for a job well done. This will help not only motivate the rest of the team to do their best work, but will also help the team feel valued and appreciated.

Say "No" to the Qualifiers

The last tip that I have to help increase employee retention has to do with the use of qualifiers. "Our sales were up by 25% this quarter.....but our competitor did go out of business and we took a lot of their existing customers." or "We were able to overhaul our website this quarter and keep things under budget but...." As a leader, it is your job to put a stop to the use of qualifiers when celebrating victories. It is just a small thing that most people do out of habit, but can really undermine the success of your team as a whole and leave them wanting more. So, be proud of your growth and your success and say no to the qualifiers.

Inc

A BBC investigation has found evidence suggesting some results from Nigeria's presidential election may have been manipulated.

The winner Bola Tinubu is due to be inaugurated on 29 May but the opposition is challenging this.

The BBC has uncovered significant anomalies in Rivers state, a key battleground, although not sufficient to change the overall national outcome of the election, which took place in February.

There are also questions over the identity of an election official who read out some of the unexplained results.

How votes are counted in Nigeria

On 25 February, Nigerians cast their votes at thousands of polling stations across the country.

At each polling station, the votes for the party of each candidate were publicly announced and the results sheets taken for collation first at the ward level, then at local government (LGA) centres.

An election official from each LGA then travelled to the state capital, where these results were officially declared.

For the first time in a Nigerian election, photographs of the polling station results sheets were published online by the electoral commission.

This made it possible to add up all the polling station sheets and to compare them with the results declared at the state level.

What we found in Rivers state

We added up the voting tally sheets from over 6,000 polling stations in Rivers state, where many of the opposition complaints had been made.

While the official result in this state gave a clear majority to Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), our tally suggested that Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) had actually received most votes in the state by a wide margin.

We found an increase of just over 106,000 in Tinubu's vote in the official declaration when compared with our polling station tally - almost doubling his total in the state.

In contrast, Obi's vote had fallen by over 50,000.

It's important to make clear that although we searched through the election website for every single one of the 6,866 polling stations in Rivers state, we were not able to obtain results from all of them.

Some were incorrectly uploaded, others were missing, even after a month from the date of polling.

For about 5% of polling stations, the photos of tally sheets were too blurred for us to read. It's reasonable to assume that the official count would have included these as they would have had the original documents.

In another 17%, there were no results at all. Many of these would have been places where no voting took place due to security issues or the non-arrival of voting materials. Others had technical problems preventing officials uploading the documents.

So there clearly would have been more polling stations included in the final official results that weren't included in the BBC investigation.

However, these additional tally sheets would have increased the totals for each party, not decreased them. And what we found was that the votes for Obi's Labour Party had decreased sharply in Rivers state.

So how can the sharp fall in votes for Peter Obi - in the official result - be explained?

Where were the biggest discrepancies?

The first was the Oyigbo local government area, where we found:

• The vote for Bola Tinubu was six times larger in the officially announced results compared with the BBC's polling station count
• Peter Obi's votes had been cut in half

The second local government area where we found major discrepancies was in nearby Obio/Akpor:

• The official result for Mr Tinubu was 80,239 votes, but we counted just 17,293 votes from polling station tallies
• The count for Obi was announced officially as just 3,829 votes, but the BBC counted 74,033 votes for him on the tally sheets

So how did these differences occur?

As explained earlier, all the polling station sheets are collated at local government (LGA) headquarters.

We found an official election document with these collated votes for the Oyigbo area, signed by an election official and some of the party agents.

Several different photographs had been taken of it and uploaded on social media accounts.

The numbers in this document closely matched our own tallies for the two leading candidates (Obi and Tinubu).

This would have been one of the 23 collation sheets from LGAs in Rivers state taken to the state capital, Port Harcourt, for the official declaration.

Broadcast live on television on 27 February, in front of a bank of microphones, Oyigbo election official, Dickson Ariaga, announced his name and that he worked for the Federal College of Education in Omoku.

On the recording, the word "Omoku" is indistinct, but there is only one Federal College of Education in Rivers state.

Ariaga then read out the results for each party in alphabetical order, including for all the smaller parties.

They all matched those on the collation sheet the BBC had obtained. But when he reached Tinubu's APC, instead of saying 2,731 as written on our photograph of the sheet, he read out "16,630".

Then for Obi's party (LP) the figure changed again - instead of the 22,289 seen on the sheet, he announced "10,784", more than halving his vote.

The mystery surrounding Dickson Ariaga

We asked the electoral commission if we could speak to Ariaga, but they would not give us his details or reach out to him for us.

We spoke to the election official seated next to Ariaga, but she told us she wasn't authorised to talk to the press.

So we sent a reporter to the Federal College of Education in Omoku, about two hours drive north of Port Harcourt, where he'd said he worked when introducing himself.

The Deputy Provost Moses Ekpa told the BBC: "From our records, both from our payroll and from our human resources, there is no such a name in our system and we don't know such a person."

We tried tracking him down on social media and eventually came across another Facebook account for someone in Port Harcourt, whose profile details had the name Dickson Ariaga.

When we compared an image from this account to the television pictures of Ariaga using Amazon Rekognition software, we achieved a match of 97.2%, indicating a very high probability they're the same man.

Ariaga did not respond to messages sent by us to this account.

By reaching out to his Facebook friends we did finally manage to speak to a man who said he was a relative, who was at first willing to help us but then didn't return our calls.

What have the authorities said?

We put these findings to Nigeria's Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec).

Johnson Sinikiem, Inec's regional spokesman in Port Harcourt, told us that due to a "gross shortage of time and personnel" they had needed to take on some people without verifying their identity documents.

Referring to Ariaga, he said: "If he had presented himself as a lecturer from [the college in Omoku] and it's otherwise, then he is dishonest."

We also approached Inec's headquarters in Abuja for a response to our findings of discrepancies in the results in Rivers state. We were told that they were unable to comment due to ongoing legal challenges.

This is just one case in one state in southern Nigeria where the evidence points to the results having been manipulated.

On their own, these altered results would not have decisively swayed the outcome of the presidential election. Tinubu won the national presidential vote by 1.8m votes over his nearest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP.

We're still looking for Ariaga to respond to the findings in this report.

BBC

About 24 million voters gathered in February at over 176,000 voting points across the country to choose Nigeria’s next president, but only five persons will cast crucial votes at the first of two court stages in a conference room in Abuja in September.

The fate of the president-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), will continue to hang in the balance months after he would have been inaugurated as Nigeria’s president on 29 May. His stay in office will still be steeped in uncertainties until the handful of judges that will hear the cases challenging his victory hand down their verdicts.

Election petitions set the stage for a paradox for democracy to break its prime “majority rule”. The choice of the minority can take the place of the decision of the majority.

It gives a reason for the riveting attention millions of Nigerians and foreigners within and outside Nigerian borders are paying to the proceedings of the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja, which began sitting last week Monday.

The court will review a mix of varied, tricky legal and factual questions that have been raised in three petitions pending before the court.

After the courtroom fireworks that promise to last months, the five jurists will retire to their conference room, a drab, small conclave in the sprawling complex of the Court of Appeal headquarters perched on the fringes of the Three Arms Zone, Abuja – the domicile of Nigeria’s highest executive, legislative and judicial powers – to deliberate and possibly vote to take a final decision, in case there are disagreements on issues thrown up at trial.

They will return to a packed courtroom to announce their decision – whether the result of the 25 February presidential election declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on 1 March was valid or not valid.

The court has up to September, the end of a statutory period of 180 days from March when the aggrieved candidates filed their petitions, to give its decision.

The decision is, however, not final, as a displeased party can still appeal to the Supreme Court. But lawyers say the Court of Appeal’s decision sets the tone of the final decision of the Supreme Court, either in concurrence or disagreement.

Using publicly- available information, here are the profiles of the five appeal court jurists who will give the much-awaited vital decision in September.

Haruna Simon Tsammani

Tsammani, who hails from Tafawa Balewa Local Government Area of Bauchi State, was unveiled as the presiding justice of the five-member panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court last week.

The 63-year-old, who occupies a relatively distant 12th position on the seniority list of the 76 judges of the Court of Appeal, must be well-regarded to be appointed to head the panel, a prized responsibility that is ordinarily reserved for the president of the court, some lawyers have said.

The immediate-past President of the Court of Appeal, Zainab Bulkachuwa, appointed herself to the position during the 2019 election cycle and only withdrew after succumbing to relentless calls on her by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to step down.

Mohammed Garba, who replaced Bulkachuwa, and another member of the panel, Abdu Aboki, were later elevated to the Supreme Court bench.

Called to the Nigerian bar after undergoing one-year-long legal studies at the Nigerian Law School in Lagos in 1983, Tsammani has spent the last four decades of his life in the legal profession. This was after he completed his law degree programme at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, between 1972 and 1982.

The experienced jurist began his journey on the bench with his appointment as a judge of the High Court of Bauchi State on 17 September 1998, about 24 years ago.

The longest-serving Justice of the Court of Appeal among the five members of the panel, Tsammani has spent half of his 24 years as a judge on the Court of Appeal bench which he was elevated to on 16 July 2010.

This is his first time participating in the panel of a presidential election petition court, a rarity that only a handful of judges in a generation are opportune to be involved in.

However, it is definitely not his first time adjudicating on an election petition or political case.

On 4 July 2020, Tsammani delivered one of the judgements of the Court of Appeal in Abuja that affirmed the second term election of Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State.

Well-familiar with intra-and inter-party disputes in Nigeria, Tsammani gave the lead judgement of the Court of Appeal that handed back the control of APC in Kano State to the outgoing governor, Abdullahi Gaduje, in February last year.

He also delivered the judgement of the Court of Appeal in Abuja that issued the order restraining the Rivers and Lagos state governments from taking action on their bids to collect Value Added Tax (VAT).

About a month later, in October 2021, he led the three-member panel of the court that dismissed a suit by the suspended National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Uche Secondus, to allow the party to hold a hitch-free national convention.

Tsammani also led the Court of Appeal’s panel that gave the October 2022 judgement suspending the release of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, from custody after the charges against the secessionist were dismissed in an earlier judgement of the court.

Stephen Jonah Adah

Adah hails from Dekina Local Government Area of Kogi State in North-central Nigeria.

Number 23 on the list of Justices of the Court of Appeal, he is the second most senior judge on the panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court. He is currently the presiding justice of the division of the court in Asaba, Delta State.

Adah is 65 years old.

He is equally a graduate of the law faculty of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and the Lagos campus of the Nigerian Law School. He was called to the Nigerian bar in 1982, about 41 years ago – a year earlier than Tsammani.

His journey on the bench began with his appointment as a judge of the Federal High Court 24 years ago on 12 November 1998.

He was appointed to the Court of Appeal bench on 5 November 2012, about 10 years ago and over two years after Tsammani.

Adah has a robust record of high-profile cases with diverse subject matters to his name. His decisions have triggered applause and controversies.

As a Federal High Court judge for 12 years, he gave judgements that portrayed his leaning towards the uncompromising defence of the supremacy of the constitution and the rights it grants citizens, as well as his aversion for arbitrariness by public officers.

In May 2012, Adah nullified a provision in the Police Act prohibiting a female police officer from marrying a man of her choice without the permission of the commissioner of police in the command where she is serving.

Adah held in the judgement that the provision contained in Regulation 124 of the Police Act was unconstitutional.

He also gave the 25 June 2012 ruling that thwarted the plan of then President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to rename the University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University, Lagos.

On 4 May 2012, he gave the judgment that restrained then-Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State from going ahead with his plan to ban or restrict the operations of commercial motorcyclists in the state. Without any law passed by the state House of Assembly to back the policy, Adah said, “It is arbitrary for the state and dictatorial in a democratic setting for the government to curtail the movement of others without any valid law passed by the National Assembly or the state House of Assembly.”

Adah’s decision inspired the law the Lagos State House of Assembly would later pass to give the ban on okada legal backing.

At the Court of Appeal, Adah delivered the lead judgement of a three-member panel that affirmed the conviction of a former Plateau State governor, Joshua Dariye, on 16 November 2018. President Muhammadu Buhari would later grant a widely condemned pardon to Dariye alongside a former governor of Taraba, Jolly Nyame, after their conviction and jailing had been affirmed by the Supreme Court.

In May 2019, Adah delivered a belated judgement that could have saved the former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, who was controversially tried at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), and removed from office.

On 24 July 2020, he delivered the lead judgment of a panel of the Court of Appeal affirming the acquittal of a cousin to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Robert Azibaola, and his wife, Stella Azibaola, accused of money laundering involving $40 million security funds.

Later that year, on 4 December 2020, Adah led a panel of justices that affirmed the death penalty imposed on Maryam Sanda, in a celebrated murder case in which the woman was accused of stabbing her husband, Bilyaminu Bello, to death.

Less than two weeks later, the jurist, on 16 December 2020, delivered the lead judgement of a three-member panel that ordered a retrial of a former spokesperson for the PDP, Olisa Metuh, earlier jailed for seven years for money laundering by the Federal High Court in Abuja.

Adah, in his judgement, also quashed the indicting comments made by the trial judge concerning a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, who is standing trial in a separate but related case of diverting billions of naira in arms funds.

Mr Adah trained as a teacher at Ilorin Teachers’ College, Ilorin between 1975 and 1976 before gaining admission to study law at ABU in 1978.

Misitura Bolaji-Yusuf

Bolaji-Yusuf, the only female member of the panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court, hails from Oyo-West Local Government Area of Oyo State, Southwest Nigeria.

The jurist, a law graduate of the law faculty of Obafemi Awolowo University, is 63 years old.

Appointed to the Court of Appeal on 24 March 2014, about nine years ago, Bolaji-Yusuf now occupies the 31st position on the roll call of the judges of the court.

Before her elevation to the Court of Appeal bench, she had put in a total of 17 years into her judicial career which began with her appointment to the High Court of Oyo State on 30 January 1997.

Adding her nine years at the Court of Appeal to her 17 years on the High Court bench, Bolaji-Yusuf becomes the longest-serving judge among the five judges on the panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court, with 26 years of unbroken career as a judge to her credit.

Her entire legal career beginning with her call to the bar in 1984 is about 39 years old. In terms of the length of their legal profession, she comes behind both Tsammani and Adah.

She currently serves at the Asaba Division of the Court of Appeal where she ranks behind Adah as the second most senior judge.

Not many cases have been credited to her in the media, but there is one that cast her in the mould of a courageous judge.

On 12 January 2006, as a judge of the High Court of Oyo State, Bolaji-Yusuf issued an order that invalidated the steps taken by then-acting Chief Judge of the state, Afolabi Adeniran, which led to the illegal removal of the then governor, Rashidi Ladoja.

Although the Acting Chief Judge withdrew the case from her, her ruling was the first major blow to the entire impeachment process which the Supreme Court would also later nullify. The Supreme Court declared the process null and void and reinstated Ladoja in its judgement delivered on 11 November 2006.

About a month before her elevation to the Court of Appeal, the judge was reported to have overseen a stormy court proceeding as a High Court judge in Ibadan in February 2014. During the hearing, most likely to be one of the last she conducted before her elevation, Bolaji-Yusuf was reported to have successfully calmed the war of nerves between opposing lawyers in the criminal case. Before the proceedings of that day, she was to have affirmed the jurisdiction of the court to hear the case.

She was also reported to have delivered the lead judgement of the three-member panel of the Benin Division of the Court of Appeal that affirmed the first term election of Governor Godwin Obaseki in June 2017.

Boloukuoromo Moses Ugo

Ugo hails from Kolokuma/Qpokuma Local Government Area in Bayelsa State, Southsouth Nigeria.

At 57, he is the youngest among the judges on the panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court.

The graduate of the law faculty of the University of Calabar was appointed to the Court of Appeal bench on 24 March 2014, making this year his ninth on the court’s bench where he occupies the 44th position on the roll call.

Before his elevation to the Court of Appeal, he served as a judge of the Bayelsa State High Court for eight years, dating back to his appointment on 21 March 2014.

In total, Ugo has put in a total of 17 years to his career on the bench, and a total of 33 years to his legal profession that started with his call to bar in 1990. He also attended the Lagos campus of the Nigerian Law School between 1989 and 1990.

Ugo, who is currently serving at the Kano Division of the Court of Appeal, is hardly read about in the media. It will perhaps take digging deep into law reports to find out the important cases he has handled.

His participation in the Presidential Election Petition Court panel is a pivotal turn in his career, placing him on a national, if not global stage where the public can gain insights into the workings of his judicial mind for the first time.

Abba Bello Mohammed

Mohammed hails from Kano State, North-west Nigeria, and is the third ABU, Zaria graduate on the Presidential Election Petition Court panel.

He was called to the Nigerian bar in 1984, marking the beginning of his legal career of about 39 years.

Like the other members of the panel, Mohammed was called to bar after passing his bar examinations at the Lagos campus of the Nigerian Law School.

The 62-year-old has less than two years on the Court of Appeal bench as he was appointed on 28 June 2021, the last time judges were appointed to the Court of Appeal bench.

The little-known judge, who is currently on a posting to the Ibadan, Oyo State Division of the Court of Appeal, ranks lowest in terms of seniority on the court’s bench among the judges on the panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court. He occupies the 71st position on the list of judges of the Court of Appeal, ranking higher than only five others with whom he was elevated to the bench in 2021.

Before his elevation to the Court of Appeal, Mohammed served on the bench of the FCT High Court, Abuja, from 2010, making about 10 to 11 years.

His participation in the Presidential Election Petition Court may become a defining milestone in his profile that has little to reference so far in the public space.

Not yet a significant case has been credited to him in media reports, perhaps many could be found to his name in legal reports.

PT