As the gubernatorial candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election in Kaduna State, Isa Ashiru, on Wednesday called for more witnesses to testify against the victory of Governor Uba Sani at the Election Petition Tribunal, a star witness of PDP contradicted self during cross examination.
During the resumed hearing of its petition, PDP presented a Software Developer, Mr. Steven Luka-Bivan to give testimony in support of its petition.
The witness, Stephen Luka Bivan who appeared before the three-man panel of the tribunal headed by Justice Victor Oviawe, told the tribunal that he was knowledgeable of the BVA’s machine, being an ICT expert.
Luka-Bivan who said he had a good knowledge of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine, however contradicted himself when was being cross-examined by Counsels to the first and second respondents( Uba Sani and APC) as he said, he has never used a BVAS machine before.
He also stated that he was not part of the team that developed the BIVAS, adding that he only talked on the technicality of the machine in his statement of oath.
The Defence Counsels, Alhassan Umar SAN, representing INEC, Duro Adeyele SAN, representing Uba Sani and Oladipo Tolani SAN representing APC , also raised objections, as the petitioners' Lead Counsel, Oluwole Iyamu SAN said that they had a video evidence to tender before the tribunal.
Iyamu also stated that some of the electoral documents requested by the tribunal from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in a subpoena were yet to be received.
"We have made the application to the INEC headquarters in Abuja and made the necessary payment but I was shocked today to hear that we need to make another payment. We would make payments as soon as possible today so that we can make progress," he said.
The Defence Counsels in their oral objections, stated that they were served with copies of the video 10 minutes before the petitioners' counsel sought to tender the video evidence in court.
They said they don't know the content of the video and as such, they would need time to watch the video, so as to prepare them for cross examination.
Head of the 3 man panel, Justice Victor Oviawie, however adjourned the case till Thursday, July 20 for the video evidence to be tendered and cross examined.
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