Election materials: PDP, Atiku withdraw court application against INEC
The Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have withdrawn their application to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission to allow their agents to participate in the process of counting ballots used in the February 25 presidential election.
Both the PDP and Atiku, who are separately contesting the outcome of the election declared in favor of Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, informed the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, sitting in the Court of Appeal in Abuja, that they have deemed it appropriate to withdraw the application.
When the CA/PEC/10M/2023 motion ex-parte was called up for hearing on Wednesday, Atiku’s team of attorneys led by Joe Kyari Gadzama informed the court that he had filed a notice of discontinuance.
Following this, a three-member panel led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh dismissed the application.
Tuesday’s meeting between Atiku’s legal team and the electoral body’s leadership resulted in the decision to withdraw the application, according to an anonymous member of the candidate’s legal team.
According to him, the initial application was filed due to obstacles and administrative bottlenecks they encountered at the INEC office when requesting access to the election materials, as the court had ordered.
“However, before the March 13 application could be scheduled for hearing, INEC unilaterally convened a meeting with our legal team.
“At the meeting that took place yesterday (Tuesday), all the ambiguities were resolved, with INEC promising to allow our agents to observe the process of sorting out some of the electoral materials we requested, particularly the ballot papers.
“Since that was primarily our request in the new application we submitted, we deemed it unnecessary to hold the hearing. Therefore, to save court time, we filed a notice of discontinuance, which was granted.”
(TNT)
