The All Progressive Grand Alliance candidate for the Anambra Central Senatorial District in the 2011 election, Prof. Dora Akunyili, has told the Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Awka, Anambra State, that she is ready to forfeit the 223 “inflated votes” that were illegally accredited to her by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
At the tribunal’s sitting today, Akunyili, who is challenging the election of a former Governor of the state, Senator Chris Ngige, as the representative of Anambra Central Senatorial District, said that the result for Adazi-Nnukwu Ward 2 were not signed by any political party agent.
Akunyili did the calculation of the votes herself, leaving her with the 123 votes that were considered illegal.
She denied knowing some people who sought to bribe voters with bags of rice, textile materials, vegetable oil, food and drinks.
The names of the persons who were said to have sent the gifts were one Mr. Okponwa and Joe Mark Onwudinjo.
But the two names were those of her agents according to documents tendered before the tribunal by Ngige’s counsel.
Documents from the Corporate Affairs Commission showed that Onwudinjo is a director of St. Leo’s Hospital, Nri, a business he jointly owns with Akunyili’s husband.
Akunyili then told the tribunal that it was her party that chose the agents and not her since she was a newcomer to the party.
Akunyili could also not sustain her grounds of petitions in 15 polling booths from Customary Court, Nnobi Umuoji Central School, cutting across Ngige’s stronghold of Idemili North and South, where she sought for cancellation of the results and requested for a new election.
She alleged ‘over voting’ in the 15 booths.
Akunyili was taken to her own witness deposition on oath where she defined ‘over voting’ as a situation where the total valid votes cast in the election is more than the total number of accredited voters.
She was cross examined on the 15 wards based on her tendered Form EC8A’s and in all the 15 wards the total valid votes she read out were below the total number of accredited voters.
She also was made by the defendant’s counsel to read out the definition of over voting in the INEC manual and the Electoral Act 2010, which all pointed to the fact that over voting never occurred in these booths as alleged.
Ngige led her with a wide margin in all the booths complained about.
One of Akunyili’s witnesses, Azom Chine Uchenna, who also doubles as her Personal Assistant and State Agent during the election, denied that forensic experts were not present when they carried out the inspection of ballot papers used at Ebe Enuagu Enugwu-Ukwu from June the 11 to June 13, 2011.
But when a list of those present at the INEC office for the inspection in Awka was tendered, the name of CSP Elias Uzoemeka, the forensic expert, was there.
Ngige will appear in the witness box when the tribunal sits o February 17, 2012.