Daniel Asama Issues Subpoena On INEC, Police Commissioner To Appear Before Tribunal

Yakubu Busari

…as star witness tenders documents  criticizing election, and certificate forgery

Hon Daniel Asama , Jos North /Bassa Federal House of Representatives candidate of the Labour  Party (LP) has said it would subpoena INEC and Police Commissioner to appear before the election Tribunal/

The legal team of the Labour  Party and Daniel Asama on Wednesday said it subpoenaed INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu through the Plateau State INEC to compel him to appear and produce electoral documents before the National Houses of Assembly  Election Petitions Tribunal sitting in Jos.

Asama’s lawyer Gwaison said he has formally written to summon the INEC which shows service but he is in total confusion because they refused to honour it.

According to him, the certified True Copies of electoral documents it tenders at the court.  He said he would formally obtain subpoenas to compel the Secretary of the Commission, Rose Oriarian-Anton, as well as INEC’s National Commissioner, Festus Okoye to appear before the court.

“Want to state that it has gotten to the stage where we summon the police commissioner, the INEC Resident Commissioner, to appear in court with documents. we are constrained and we don’t have right over them we will make the formal application”, Gwaison told the tribunal.

Gwaison presented two witnesses Suleh Atul Agun who served as the Local  Coordinator of the LP at a collection center in Jos North LGA  during the 25th February 2023 election as its regular witness before the court in its petition challenging the election of Hon.Musa Avia Agah, PDP, Hon Goni Muhammad Adamu Alkali, PRP, and INEC as 5th respondent.

He told the tribunal Chairman, Honourable Justice William Olamide that they have some documents to tender in support of the suit and seek the leave of the court to explain that the Appeal Court was equally subpoenaed to tender judgment of the appeal.

However, Suleh Agun the witness adopted his witness statement on oath wherein dated the 19th day of March 2023 while showing through the clerk as B.B when on cross-examination by Pius.Akubo , SAN, told the tribunal that he went through a successful accredit and voted in his own polling unit before embarking on all the polling units in Jos North, Bassa.

Justice William marked the documents with exhibits no, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5,&B6 respectively, which is the High Court judgment, Appeal Court and Supreme Court, and others’ judgment obtained as his subpoena read pages 39,41 as the petitioners sought the tribunal to disqualify the winner on alteration, manipulation, mutilation and cancelation of results.

Suleh PW1 explained that he was surprised that nobody was responsible for the complaints raised only the ad hoc staff of INEC were present before arriving on why the exercise was marred by irregularities and manipulation of results.

He stressed that all efforts to see that the issue of certificate forgery was certified proved abortive as they have suffered setbacks to tender the documents to the court as exhibits.

Under cross-examination by Musa Agah’s lawyer, Pius Akubo , The star witness and petitioner Daniel Asama admitted that the polling unit result is the primary source of validating election results while alleging deliberate bypass of the BVAS machine during the National Assembly election.

He disclosed that the petitioner Daniel Asama wasn’t a Collation agent, who, under cross-examination by Akubo alleged that there were secret polling units that conducted illegal thumb printing of results.

Gwaison subsequently called for the adjournment of his matter till Monday,19th June 2023.