JUST IN: Tribunal dismisses Atiku, PDP’s request to have access to INEC’s server

The five-member tribunal unanimously dismissed Atiku’s
application to inspect INEC’s server.

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal has rejected the
request of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential
candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to inspect the server of the Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC).

INEC crowned President Muhammadu Buhari winner of the February
23 election with 15,191,847 of the total votes cast while Atiku
gained 11,262,978 votes.

However, in a petition filed before the tribunal, Atiku claimed
that he actually won the election with 1.6 million more votes than
Buhari according to an internal compilation of results he claimed
was obtained from INEC’s server.

According to the result obtained from the INEC server as claimed
by Atiku in his petition, the former vice president actually scored
18,356,732 votes while Buhari scored 16,741,430 votes. This does
not include results from Rivers State which had allegedly not been
transmitted at the time Atiku claims the data was captured.

INEC has relentlessly denied electronically transmitting the
result of the election to a server and accused Atiku and the PDP of
producing fake election results to prove their case.

While ruling on Atiku’s request to inspect INEC’s server on
Monday, July 24, 2019, the five-member panel unanimously dismissed
the application.

The tribunal said that since issues have been joined on the
existence or non-existence of the server, it cannot rule on the
application at the interlocutory stage.

Details later.

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