WITNESSES to the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) senatorial candidate in Anambra South in the March 28 National Assembly elections, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, has told the Anambra State Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Awka that the dead voted in the senatorial election in the district.
The witnesses, who testified before the tribunal along with the petitioner, recently, tendered duplicate original copies of the result sheets in customised form, which they retrieved from election officials from the field immediately after the election.
The witnesses, who were polling agents in the elections, told the tribunal that the results they had showed that Ndukwe had majority of the lawful votes cast at the election, instead of Senator Andy Ubah who was declared winner by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
They denied knowledge of the use of any “non-customised” result sheets (written in long hand instead of printed) or “Voting Point – VP” result sheets produced by INEC officials as the results of the same election.
A statement on the tribunal’s proceedings, which was made available to The Guardian, quoted one of the witnesses, Chief Orajiaka, a community leader in Uli, as stating that no elections were conducted in Uli Ward 1 under cross examination.
The statement added that Orajiaka threw the whole court into laughter when he noted that, “it will be a disaster for democracy to declare that elections took place in the two wards as even the voters register uploaded by INEC contains the names of dead people who allegedly voted in the elections conducted by INEC in Uli and Lilu.”
Ndukwe, while answering questions under cross examination, stated that he was in the Tribunal to have a recalculation of the scores of the election from legitimate result sheets.
He stated that “in the recalculation, every result on voting point result sheet has to be excluded and every result on non-customised result sheet is a no go area”.
He questioned how INEC could write the results of an entire ward on “Voting Point” result sheets when original customised result sheets were provided for all poling units.
