Major Setback: Election Tribunal Rejects Atiku Access to INEC Server

 

 

Major Setback: Election Tribunal Rejects Atiku Access to INEC Server

 

Unless the main opposition party in Nigeria, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate in last election, Atiku Abubakar appeals today’s decision of the Election Petition Tribunal, they will not be able to access the server of the electoral umpire, INEC, to justify their claims.

PDP and Atiku are relying on the figures purportedly published on the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to argue that the final result of the presidential election was faulty.

By implication, if the opposition will not access the central server, they would have lost a lot of grounds to justify their claims.

 Presidential Election Tribunal on Monday rejected the request PDP and Atiku to compel the INEC  to allow them access to the server used for this year’s presidential election.

In a ruling on the application, the five-member panel unanimously refused the request, saying the request could not be granted because issues had been joined by parties over the existence or otherwise of the server.

The judges said it was impossible for the tribunal to delve into the server issue at the interlocutory stage of the panel’s sittings, Channels TV is reporting.

The PDP and Mr Abubakar, through their lawyers, led by Levy Uzoukwu, asked the tribunal to compel INEC to grant them access to the server and smart card readers used in the conduct of the election.

But the counsel representing INEC, Yunus Usman, in a counter affidavit asked the court to dismiss the application.

“They are asking us to bring something we do not have,” Mr Usman said.

He further called the attention of the tribunal to its judgment of March 6 granting PDP access to inspect only election materials without the server.

The PDP and Mr Abubakar are challenging the declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the election.

President Muhammadu Buhari at the Democracy Day celebration (Photo Credit: Bashir Ahmad on Twitter)

The petitioners claimed that the results they obtained from the INEC server indicated that Mr Abubakar won the poll with an over six million votes margin.

The counsel to President Muhammadu Buhari, Wole Olanipekun, and the APC, Lateef Fagnemi, on their part, asked the court to dismiss the application for failing to disclose the existence of the server.

Mr Abubakar had said that results from the INEC server showed that he scored 18,356,732 votes as against 16,741,430 votes by Mr Buhari. INEC had through manual collation announced President Buhari winner of the election with 15,191,847 votes with Mr Abubakar polling 11, 262,978 votes.