Atiku vs Buhari: Tribunal rejects PDP's request to inspect INEC 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.

The chairman of the tribunal, Justice Mohammed Garba, said granting the request of the petitioners would amount to pre-judging the issue of the existence of a server, an issue yet to be determined in the substantive hearing of the main petiton.

"The law is settled that the court should ensure caution while dealing with interlocutory application so as not to make any observation that affects the substantive case," he said.

He said the tribunal will have to entertain testimonies of witnesses and documentary evidence from all parties before it can rule on the existence of the server.

The tribunal adjourned further hearing of the petition till June 26.