June 17, 2023. Parallel Facts – Dino Melaye, the People’s Democratic Party’s national collation agent on election day, February 25, argued before the Presidential Election Petition Court that the electoral commission’s declaration of Bola Tinubu as president was based on a fraudulent and incorrectly computed result.
Melaye provided testimony as a star witness in the suit filed by the Peoples Democratic Party and Atiku Abubakar, the party’s presidential candidate in the election, to have Tinubu’s declaration as the election’s victor annulled.
The witness, who was cross-examined by Atiku’s main attorney, Chris Uche, SAN, claimed he declined to sign the final results because he didn’t want to take part in the fraud and malpractices that allegedly tainted the collation process.
He claimed that INEC “wrongly computed” the presidential election results.
“I didn’t endorse it, because I don’t endorse fraud,” he said.
In addition, he testified before the court that many other PDP operatives who participated in the presidential election did not sign the results at all levels.
Akin Olujimi (SAN), Tinubu’s attorney, questioned the witness, and the witness responded by asserting that “failure of transmission of what has been recorded is an infringement of the law.”
Additionally, he claimed that without the electronic transmission of results from the polling places to the INEC results viewing page, the election cycle could not be declared to have been completed.
