INEC opens defence on Atiku’s petition today – TheNigerialawyer

As the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal resumes sitting
on Monday (today), the Independent National Electoral Commission is
scheduled to open its defence in response to the petition filed by
Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and his Peoples Democratic Party challenging
the outcome of the February 23, 2019 presidential poll.

The Justice Mohammed Garba-led tribunal of five judges had after
the petitioners rested their case with 62 witnesses on July 19
adjourned further proceedings till Monday for INEC to open its
defence.

The petitioners’ legal team led by Dr Livy Uzoukwu (SAN)
tendered as exhibits over 50,000 documents, mostly result sheets
from 11 states where they mainly disagreed with the outcome of the
poll.

INEC is the 1st respondent to the petition, while President
Muhammadu Buhari and his All Progressives Congress, whose victory
at the poll are being challenged by the petitioners, are the 2nd
and the 3rd respondents, respectively.

INEC’s Director, Information and Communications Technology, Mr
Chidi Nwafor, is one of the commission’s proposed witnesses.

INEC, whose legal team is led by Yunus Usman (SAN), has six days
to present its case. Buhari and the APC will in turn take six days
each to present their defence.

Nwafor, in his statement on oath attached to INEC’s reply to the
petition, denied the “server results” which the petitioners were
laying claim to as the authentic results of the last presidential
poll.

INEC had declared that Buhari and the APC won the February 23
election with 15,191,847 votes to defeat his closest rival, Atiku,
whom it said polled 11,262,978 votes.

Atiku and his party had urged the tribunal to hold that “from
the data” in INEC’s server “the true, actual and correct results”
from “state to state computation” showed that they polled a total
of 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari whom they said scored
16,741,430 votes.

By calculation, Atiku and the PDP claimed to have defeated
Buhari by 1,615,302 votes.

But Nwafor stated in his witness statement on oath that all the
results of the election were collated manually and were never
transmitted electronically.

He stated, “That the petitioners did not win the majority of the
lawful votes cast and did not satisfy the mandatory constitutional
requirement to be declared winner having polled 11,262,978 and one
quarter of all lawful votes cast in 29 states and the Federal
Capital Territory, Abuja as against the 2nd respondent who scored
15,191,847 votes cast and one quarter of the lawful votes cast in
33 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.”

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has been asked to disqualify
President Muhammadu Buhari as the All Progressives Congress’
candidate in the last presidential election.

Three appellants, Kalu Agu, Labaran Ismail, Hassy El-Kunis are,
by their appeal before the apex court, challenging the July 12,
2019 judgment of the Court of Appeal in Abuja which dismissed their
case.

They had through their suit first filed before the Federal High
Court in Abuja alleged that Buhari was not qualified to contest the
last presidential poll on the grounds that he submitted false
information regarding his academic qualification and certificate to
the Independent National Electoral Commission after emerging as the
APC’s candidate for the poll.

But Justice Ahmed Mohammed of the Federal High Court in Abuja
had in his judgment delivered on May 2, 2019 struck out the suit
for being statute-barred.

The three appellants have appealed to the Supreme Court.

In their notice of appeal dated and filed July 24, 2019, the
appellants through their counsel, Ukpai Ukairo, presented 12
grounds for the setting aside of the judgment of the Court of
Appeal.

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