The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the Feb 23 poll, Atiku Abubakar, has filed for a motion before the 2019 Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal seeking an order to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to make available for inspection the materials used for the February 23 polls. Atiku lost to the incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), but he is challenging the results in court.
In an ex parte application dated March 4, 2019, the petitioners prayed the tribunal to compel the electoral body to allow them inspect the smart card readers, ballot papers, voter registers and other relevant documents used during the exercise for the purposes of establishing alleged irregularities.
Filed by Chris Uche (SAN), the application was accompanied by a 12-paragraph affidavit deposed to by the Director of Contact and Mobilization, Atiku Abubakar Presidential Campaign Council, Colonel Austin Akobundu (rtd).
Atiku and PDP filed the ex-Parte application before the Presidential election petition tribunal seated at the Court of Appeal in Abuja. The motion filed by the PDP candidate and the party seeks to get permission to the database of the smartcard readers and all the election materials for audit.
Atiku decried the militarization of the electoral process, the ‘statistical impossibility’ of states ravaged by the war on terror generating much higher voter turnouts than peaceful states, and the suppressed votes in PDP strongholds. According to INEC, the former vice president lost the election with more than a three million vote margin. Atiku claimed he would have called the victor within seconds of his being aware of his opponent’s victory if he had lost in a free and fair election.
The spokesperson of the APC presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo, said the Atiku has a right to head to court and that the APC is anxious to meet Atiku in court. “Our official position is that we believe that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar has a constitutional right to seek redress in court and we do not seek in any way to curtail that right. In fact, it is the resort to court that is the only democratic way to ventilate his perceived grievance and any attempt to restrict or discourage the exercise of such right would be an invitation to anarchy,” he said.
“In addition, we are very anxious to meet Alhaji Atiku Abubakar in court in order to show the world in a conclusive manner the free and fair nature of the comprehensive defeat of Atiku at the polls. An election is not termed ‘rigged’ only by the mere claim of it by the loser. That is what Atiku and the PDP want to ram down our throats.”
This came as the Buhari Campaign Organization (BCO) wrote the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) urging them to prevail upon the Waziri Adamawa “to jettison his plan of going to court to challenge President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election.”
In separate letters addressed to the heads of EU and AU observation missions in Nigeria, the support group stated that the international bodies must act fast to save Nigeria’s democracy from what it described as “Atiku’s conduct despite the reports of fairness in the polls.”
However, the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) has refuted claims that it petitioned international organizations to dissuade the former vice president from heading for the tribunal. In a statement, its spokesman, Festus Keyamo (SAN), said: “Our investigation reveals that a letter to that effect was purportedly written by a certain ‘Buhari Campaign Organization’. This is the second time we will be informing the public that the said ‘Buhari Campaign Organization’ does not act at the behest of the APC Presidential Campaign Council nor does it represent the Muhammadu Buhari Campaign Organization in any way. As a result, whatever it has released does not represent the position of the APC PCC or President Muhammadu Buhari.”
The council maintained that Atiku has a constitutional right to seek redress if he so desired, adding: “The resort to court is the only democratic way to ventilate his perceived grievance and any attempt to restrict or discourage the exercise of such right would be an invitation to anarchy.”
