Former President John Dramani Mahama’s third witness in the ongoing presidential election petition hearing Robert Joseph Mettle-Nunoo, is set to testify via live video.
The witness is unable to make it to court due to medical reasons and a provision has been made for him to testify via videos conferencing platform, Zoom.
Few minutes after the case was called, Akoto Ampaw, lead counsel for President Nana Akufo-Addo raised concerns about the absence of a judicial officer to monitor the witness to ensure that there is no other person in the room feeding him with information during cross examination.
Tsatsu Tsikata, lead counsel for Mr. Mahama in response told the court that that provision can still be made as it will not take more than 30 minutes for an officer of the Judicial Service to be sent there.
The court subsequently stood the case down for the officer to be transported to where the witness is.
Joseph Mettle-Nunoo who was one of the two agents of Mr. Mahama at the EC’s national collation centre has already filed his witness statement.
He notes that officials of the EC had misled him to sign one of the regional collation forms which he had issues with in the “Strongroom”.
He said the officials had told him that once his colleague regional representative had signed the collation form, the only reprieve left for him was to go to court to challenge it.
“I must admit I was misled by this position of the EC officials into signing the regional collation sheet for the Ashanti Region simply because there was a signature of the agent of the petitioner (Mr. Mahama) at the regional collation centre on that sheet”.
Mr. Mettle-Nuno also indicates in his witness statement that he and his colleague had been “sent to convey a message to the petitioner” after he had spoken to the Chairperson of the EC, Jean Mensa about the challenges with some of the summary sheets from the region.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak
