Presidential Election Tribunal: Dino Melaye Testifies, Alleges Manipulated Results, Fraudulent Computation

• Senator Dino Melaye, the PDP candidate in Kogi State, testifies as a key witness in the petition against President Bola Tinubu’s election.

• Melaye alleges fraudulent computation of results and refusal to sign the final result.

• He claims that the presidential election results were manipulated and differ from those on the IReV portal.

EKO HOT BLOG reports that the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kogi State, Senator Dino Melaye, testified as a star witness in the petition against President Bola Tinubu’s election.

Melaye appeared as the 22nd witness in the case filed by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the PDP’s presidential candidate, before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja.

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Melaye, who previously represented Kogi West in the Senate, stated that he served as the National Collation Officer of the PDP for the presidential poll held on February 25. He refused to sign the final result announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) due to alleged fraudulent computation.

During cross-examination by INEC’s lawyer, Melaye revealed that he voted in Kogi State on election day but immediately traveled to Abuja to perform his assigned task.

He stated that while the party had agents in all polling units nationwide, some of these agents also declined to sign the election results due to widespread electoral malpractices.

Melaye emphasized that the Electoral Act made it mandatory for results from polling units to be electronically transmitted to INEC’s IReV portal, but he alleged that the presidential election results were manipulated and differed from those on the IReV portal.

When asked about the similarity between his statement and that of another witness, Melaye clarified that he could not know what another person had stated.

He also mentioned that he became aware of the alleged device management system used by INEC to allocate votes to Tinubu through a press statement issued before the election. Melaye defended his claim, stating that the statement from INEC made it more than mere speculation.

Melaye asserted that he had firsthand information and reports from agents and the party’s Situation Room, which included live feeds from various locations across the country.

He maintained that INEC’s failure to transmit the presidential election results infringed upon the law and that delays in transmission, though ideally not supposed to affect the results, became problematic due to possible manipulation.

Melaye stated that a statistician hired by the petitioners helped establish that the election was rigged, with significant deductions from Atiku’s votes. He further alleged an unlawful allocation of votes to Tinubu using technology imported from China.

After Melaye’s testimony, certified copies of polling unit results from 13 Local Government Areas in Nasarawa State were tendered as evidence. The court was informed that INEC only provided the results from Nasarawa State, despite being subpoenaed to produce results from 26 states.

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Additionally, certified copies of INEC’s Forms EC40G from Nasarawa State, summarizing polling units where elections did not take place or were disrupted or canceled, were presented. The hearing in the case was adjourned until Monday by the panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani.

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