Atiku Withdraws Court Application – Atiku And The People’s Democratic Party(PDP) Withdraw Court Application Against INEC
The Independent National Electoral Commission has been ordered by the Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to permit their agents to take part in the process of sorting out the ballots that were used for the February 25 presidential election. However, this request has since been withdrawn.
The PDP and Atiku both informed the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, meeting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, that they have decided to withdraw their applications to contest the results of the election, which were declared in favor of Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
When the motion ex-parte, marked: CA/PEC/10M/2023, was called up for hearing on Wednesday, Atiku, through his team of lawyers led by Joe Kyari Gadzama, told the court that he filed a notice of discontinuance.
A three-person panel led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh then dismissed the application.
Atiku’s legal team met with the leadership of the electoral body on Tuesday, and as a result of that meeting, the decision to withdraw the application was made, according to a member of Atiku’s legal team who did not want his name mentioned.
He claimed that the initial application was made as a result of difficulties and administrative roadblocks they ran into at the INEC office while attempting to obtain access to the election materials as authorized by the court.
“However, INEC called a meeting of our legal team on its own before the March 13 application could be scheduled for a hearing.
“At that meeting, which took place yesterday (Tuesday), all the ambiguities were clarified. INEC promised to permit our agents to watch as some of the electoral materials we requested, particularly the ballots, were sorted.
“We believed that it would not be necessary to move forward with the hearing because that was the main request we made in the new application we submitted. We, therefore, filed a notice of discontinuance, which was subsequently approved, in order to save the court’s time.”