The Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have withdrawn their application to the Independent National Electoral Commission, which sought to allow their agents to participate in the sorting process of ballot papers used in the presidential election held on February 25. Atiku and the PDP are both challenging the election outcome, which declared Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner. At the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Abuja, Atiku’s legal team led by Joe Kyari Gadzama, informed the court that they had filed a notice of discontinuance, leading to the striking out of the application by the Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led three-member panel.
One member of Atiku’s legal team revealed that the decision to withdraw the application was made after a meeting with the leadership of the electoral body on Tuesday. Initially, the application was filed due to administrative challenges and bottlenecks faced by the legal team while attempting to access the election materials granted by the court at the INEC office.
He also noted that, “However, before the application which was dated March 13 could be slated for hearing, INEC, on its own, called our legal team for a meeting.
“It was at that meeting which held yesterday (Tuesday) that all the grey areas were sorted out, with INEC pledging to allow our agents to observe the process of sorting out some of the electoral materials we requested, especially the ballot papers.
“Since that was primarily our prayer in the fresh application we filed, we felt that it would not be necessary to proceed with the hearing. So, to save judicial time, we filed a notice of discontinuance which was accordingly granted.”
