INEC Opens Defence On Atiku’s Petition Today

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC will today open its defence in response to a petition filed by the former vice president and presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP challenging the outcome of the 2019 presidential elections.

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal resumes sitting on Monday after the Justice Mohammed Garba-led tribunal of five judges adjourned further proceedings till Monday (today) 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 in 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.

Recall that 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.

Meanwhile, 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.