Ndubuisi Nwobu, a witness of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidential candidate in the February 25 election, Atiku Abubakar, on Wednesday, revealed how his candidate was rigged out by Labour Party’s Presidential candidate, Peter Obi in Anambra state, saying “magic happened to the votes of the PDP candidate at different collation centres.
It was gathered that in the results announced by the Independent Electoral Commission, Peter Obi scored 584, 621 votes in Anambra to defeat Atiku who polled 9,036 votes in the state and Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress scored 5, 111 votes.
Nwobu, an Anambra PDP chairman and also the state collation agent of the party during proceedings, told the court that after the counting of votes, presiding officers refused to upload the results, adding that he visited about 30 polling units out of the 4,720 polling units in the state on election day.
He also said he was forced to sign the result sheet of the election at the state collation centre 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,” Nwobu said.
“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 centre, Nwobu said “yes”.
“They were taken to the collation centre at the ward level. That is where magic started happening,” he said.
“There were problems at the polling units with presiding officers.”
He said in some instances, 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.
Nwobu is Atiku’s eleventh witness to testify before the five-member panel headed by Haruna Tsammani.