Why Atiku Withdrew His Court Application Against INEC

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar has withdrawn his application against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

KanyiDaily recalls that Atiku and the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, had obtained the order of the tribunal at the Court of Appeal in Abuja to have access to all the sensitive materials used by INEC in the February 25 presidential election.

However, Atiku and the PDP filed another motion that sought to compel the INEC to allow the party’s agents to participate in the sorting of ballot papers used in the election which produced Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the president-elect.

Atiku’s fresh motion ex-parte marked: CA/PEC/10M/2023 followed the claims that the electoral body refused to grant them access to monitor the sorting of ballot papers.

But when the case was called at the court session on Wednesday, Atiku through his team of lawyers led by Mr. Joe Kyari Gadzama (SAN) told the court that he filed a notice of discontinuance.

Upon inquiry on why the matter was withdrawn, a member of the legal team who did not want to be named said: “We filed the application owing to challenges and administrative bottlenecks we encountered at the INEC office when we went for access to the election materials as ordered by the court.”

“However, before the application dated March 13 could be slated for hearing, INEC, on its own, called our legal team for a meeting.

“It was at that meeting which was held yesterday (Tuesday) that all the grey areas were sorted out, with INEC, pledging to allow our agents to observe the process of sorting out some of the electoral materials we requested for, especially the ballot papers.

“Since that was primarily our prayer in the fresh application we filed, we felt that it would not be necessary to proceed with the hearing. So, to save judicial time, we filed a notice of discontinuance which was accordingly granted.”

Following the withdrawal of the application, a three-member panel of the tribunal struck out the application.

This comes after INEC warned PDP that the allegation that its chairman, Mahmood Yakubu rigged the presidential election could lead to a lawsuit.