Atiku, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and his party are challenging the results of the February 23, 2019 Presidential election.
They dragged INEC, President Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress,APC, before the tribunal
During the proceedings of the tribunal yesterday, the respondents moved some applications which were reserved for ruling.
The Tribunal had however while reserving ruling in the applications , fixed tomorrow to hear two pending applications filed by the petitioners. Specifically, the applications are praying the tribunal for an order to inspect the INEC server and consequently file its report before the panel.
In all, the tribunal heard nine applications yesterday, while both the INEC and APC withdrew two applications.
The petitioners had filed 6 different applications, INEC filed four , Buhari and APC filed three each.
INEC through its counsel, Ustaz Yunus Usman withdrew one of its application praying the tribunal to strike out some paragraphs from the petition.
In the same vein, the APC through its counsel, Lateef Fagbemi SAN also withdrew one of its application seeking to strike out some paragraphs from the petition.
Earlier, while adopting their different applications, the three respondents asked the tribunal to dismiss the petition filed by Atiku and PDP.
APC hinged its application on ground that the petitioner failed to join Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
It further argued that it collated the results of the election manually and never transmitted them electronically as argued by the petitioners.
It added that it kept no server where results could have been transmitted electronically and stored as alleged by the petitioners.
Buhari in his own application prayed the tribunal to strike out some paragraph of the petition , as that will make the petition unmeritorious.
APC in his own application also prayed the tribunal to dismiss the petition, as it lacked jurisdiction to entertain it because some sections of the Electoral Act was not complied with.
However, the petitioners, in their application filed on May 8, maintained that INEC kept “central servers” in which “information was recorded and stored in database packets relating to accreditation of voters and transmission of results from the presidential election”.
They sought to be permitted to inspect the said servers and the card readers used for the conduct of the poll, examine and analyse the information obtained from them.
They also prayed for the tribunal’s permission to be allowed to file a report of their inspection, examination and analysis of the content of the facilities.
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