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Tinubu: Melaye Testifies In Court, Justifies Refusal To Sign Presidential Poll Result

Published

11 months ago

June 17, 2023

Editor

The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Kogi State, Senator Dino Melaye, on Friday, testified as a star witness in the petition seeking to nullify President Bola Tinubu’s election.

Melaye mounted the box as the 22nd witness in the case that the presidential candidate of the party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, filed against Tinubu before the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting in Abuja.

Led in evidence by Atiku’s lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, Melaye, who hitherto represented Kogi West in the Senate, told the court that he served as the National Collation Officer of the PDP for the presidential poll that held on February 25.

Melaye told the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led five-member panel of the court that he refused to sign the final result the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, used to declare Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, as winner of the presidential contest.

According to him, “the said result was wrongly computed and announced. That was why I refused to sign it because I don’t endorse fraud.”

While being cross-examined by INEC’s lawyer, Mr. Abubakar Mahmood, SAN, Melaye, told the court that though he voted in Kogi state on the election day, he immediately left for Abuja to perform the task that was assigned to him by his party.

He told the court that though the party had agents in all polling units across the federation, however, some of the agents also declined to sign copies of election results in their locations owing to widespread electoral malpractices they observed.

“My lords, it is not true that all the agents signed results of the election across the federation. Not all of them signed. I may not give you the specific details or actual number of our agents that did not sign the results in protest.”

He told the court that as lawmaker that was involved in the amendment of the Electoral Act, he knew that the law made it mandatory that results from polling units, should be electronically transmitted to INEC’s IReV portal.

Alleging that result of the presidential election was manipulated, the PW-22, told the court that evidence at the disposal of the Atiku and the PDP, established that results of the election in the IReV portal, was different from what was announced by the INEC.

“My lords, exhibits have shown that result on the IReV was at variance with what was announced.

“What was brought to Abuja by State Returning Officers was totally different from what transpired in the states,” he added.

Asked if his evidence before the court was based on what he was told by other agents of the party, Melaye, said: “As a National Collation Officer of my party, I was just like the INEC Chairman, who even though he was not all over the country, but he still announced results he received from all over the country.

“So, my statement on oath before this court was based on what I personally experienced and reports from our agents, as well as from our Situation Room.

“We received information from agents all over the country and some of them were live feed, with the aid of technology.”

Asked if he would be surprised to know that his statement on oath was the same thing, word for word, with a statement by another witness in the matter, Melaye, replied: “My lords, there is no way I could know what another person stated. I don’t have celestial powers. I cannot be surprised about what I don’t know.”

On the allegation that INEC deployed a device management system that quarantined and allocated votes in Tinubu’s favour, Melaye, said he got to know about the said device through a press statement the INEC issued before the election.

“Physically, I did not see the mechanism, but I saw a statement released by INEC, where it narrated that scenario.”

Asked if he never considered that such allegation could be based on speculation, the witness, said: “With the statement coming from INEC, I do not see it as speculation.”

Asked how he got information to back his allegation that results of the election were manipulated in Borno, Benue, Kano and Lagos state, Melaye, said: “My lords, I was in those states, technically, because there was live feed from our agents and I was viewing what was happening.”

While also being cross examined by President Tinubu’s lawyer, Melaye, Chief Akin Olujinmi, SAN, the former lawmaker insisted that INEC’s failure to transmit results of the presidential election, was an infringement of the law.

However, he noted that ordinarily, delay in transmission of the results would not have posed a problem if they would not be manipulated along the process.

“Ideally, such delay is not supposed to change the results, but we can all see that this election was not an ideal situation.”

He told the court that the petitioners engaged a statistician that helped them to establish that the presidential election was rigged with “massive votes deducted” from Atiku.

Answering questions from APC’s lawyer, Mr. Afolabi Fashanu, SAN, Melaye, further maintained that “there were unlawful allocation of votes to the 2nd Defendant (Tinubu),” using a technology he said was imported from China.

Meanwhile, shortly after he was discharged from the witness box, counsel for the Petitioners, Chief Uche, SAN, tendered in evidence, certified copies of polling unit results from 13 Local Government Areas in Nasarawa state.

He told the court that though INEC was subpoenaed to produce the said results contained in Forms EC8A, from 26 states, it, however, only brought that of Nasarawa state.

More so, Uche, SAN, also certified copies of INEC’s Forms EC40G from Nasarawa state, which he said was the summary of polling units where elections did not hold, was disrupted or outrightly cancelled.

The Justice Tsammani-led panel adjourned further hearing in the matter till Monday.
VANGUARD

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Teenager Jailed For Life For Murder Of 16-year-old Boy At House Party

Published

7 mins ago

May 4, 2024

Editor

A teenager who stabbed Mikey Roynon, 16, to death with a “zombie knife” has been jailed for life.

Shane Cunningham, 16, fatally stabbed Mikey Roynon in the neck with a large hunting-style knife during a 16th birthday house party in Bath, Somerset in June 2023.

Mr Justice Saini sentenced him to life in jail with a minimum sentence of 16 years before he could be released for parole after he was convicted of murder.

Teenager jailed for life for murder of boy, 16, at house party
Shane Cunningham

His co-accused – Cartel Bushnell and Leo Knight, both 16 – were convicted of manslaughter after being acquitted of the more serious charge.

A judge sentenced Bushnell to nine years of youth detention, while Knight was given nine-and-a-half years’ youth detention.

The judge ruled that all three could be identified despite their age after an application by the PA news agency.

Cunningham had claimed he was acting in self-defence, claiming during the trial that Mikey had swung a knife towards friends in the garden of the property. But the jury saw through his story following a trial at Bristol crown court.

Mikey collapsed on the driveway with heavy bleeding from a single knife wound to his neck.

Police, paramedics and doctors soon arrived at the scene in Weston, a north-west suburb of Bath, but Mikey died.

The defendants ran off and threw away their weapons, two of which were recovered by police.

Detective Inspector Mark Newbury said: “That three boys armed themselves with knives to go to a teenage girl’s 16th birthday party is utterly unconscionable.

“Mikey went to that party to socialise and to have a good time. Instead, he was attacked with a horrifying weapon, suffered a catastrophic injury and tragically lost his life.

“Mikey was a much loved teenage boy and his family have been left totally devastated.

“They have shown incredible bravery and have courageously spoken out against knife crime since his death, which is something they should never have to do.

“Since Mikey’s death, other young lives have been lost across our policing area and as a result we have launched a proactive operation to tackle and disrupt serious violence and knife crime involving young people.

“However, we know police enforcement alone won’t solve the problem and we’re working closely with our local authority partners, our colleagues in education and health and the Violence Reduction Partnership to identify the root causes and divert young people away from criminality.

“Our communities are also key and we’d like to encourage parents to talk to their children about knife crime – to make sure that they understand the terrible consequences carrying a knife can have and also how to report if they have concerns about someone they know carrying a knife.”

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Shock As Woman Who Visited Hospital For Scan Was Told She’s Dead

Published

2 hours ago

May 3, 2024

Editor

A woman was left shocked when she turned up to a hospital scan only to be told by staff that her records showed that she was already ‘’dead.”

Susan Johnson from Scarborough was left ‘shaking by a leaf’ after staff at the Bridlington Hospital in Yorkshire told her their records showed she’d been dead for four months.

The incident left Susan, 62, a retired housekeeper, baffled that her husband Bob needed to bring her a strong coffee to help calm her nerves.

The mother-of-two told BBC News: ‘I gave them my letter and their first words were, “ooh you’re dead”.

‘I said, “pardon?”. I was in shock.

‘Then they put something on the computer so I could have the scan and then they just said, “bye” and that’s it.’

It is unclear how the mistake happened as when Susan contacted her GP, they told her that the mistake had been fixed.

However, when she contacted the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the call handler told her she was still marked as already dead on the system.

‘On the computer you’re dead,’ she was told. Susan then informed her she couldn’t be dead as she was on the phone and talking.

The error meant that Susan’s carer’s allowance for looking after her disabled husband Bob briefly stopped, though this has now been fixed.

She said she shut down completely after the news and said there was nobody to talk to about the mistake.

Scarborough Medical Group told the BBC they’d received an electronic instruction about the ‘death’ from Primary Care Support England (PCSE).

Susan is concentrating on her hobbies of gardening and knitting as she recovers from the shock.

An NHS spokesperson said: ‘We are aware of an issue involving a civil death registration being incorrectly recorded against a patient’s medical record.

‘This was removed within 24 hours of it being reported to us in March 2023 and the patient was re-registered by their GP.

‘We would encourage the patient to contact us directly so we can explain further.’

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PHOTOS: Sandhurst Trained: UK High Commissioner Hosts First Nigerian Female To Graduate From Premier British Military Institution

Published

7 hours ago

May 3, 2024

Editor

The British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Richard Montgomery, has congratulated Princess Owowoh on making history at the United Kingdom’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS).

Taking to X.com on Thursday, Montgomery expressed his pleasure in meeting Owowoh, who was accompanied by an officer from the Nigerian Defence Academy.

Sharing photos, he wrote, “I was pleased to meet 2nd Lt. Princess Owowoh, the first Nigerian female officer cadet to graduate from the UK’s

#RMASandhurst, accompanied by Lt. Col Nyiam from the #NDefenceAcademy to congratulate her on making history, hear about her experience, and reflect on our Nigeria-British relationship.”

Owowoh graduated from the RMAS as the first-ever Nigerian female officer on April 12.

She joined the NDA in Kaduna in 2018, where she was appointed as a cadet lance corporal in her second year.

She rose to a cadet sergeant in her fourth year and was appointed company senior under Officer Charlie (CSUO C) in her fifth year.

Owowoh held the appointment with two other female counterparts and made history by becoming the first female to hold the position of CSUO at the academy.

During her fourth year, she completed the academic component of the commissioning course, achieving first-class honours in biological sciences.

See the photos below: