By Shola Abayomi.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate in the February 23 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, has declared that the ruling of the presidential election petition tribunal, denying him and his party access to inspect the “central server” supposedly used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to transmit results in the presidential election, will be challenged at the Supreme Court.
The presidential election petition tribunal, in a unanimous decision yesterday, declined the PDP and Atiku’s request, since the issue of whether such central server existed or not, is already a subject of controversy in the substantive petition that is challenging President Muhammadu Buhari’s re-election.
In response to the tribunal’s ruling, a lead counsel in the PDP and Atiku’s legal team, Chris Uche, SAN, said, “The nation was looking forward to this ruling and it is one that is very pivotal to this matter.
“The Electoral Act itself empowers the tribunal to grant access such as this to the petitioners in order to institute and maintain a petition, and that is what we are asking for.
“Somehow, at this stage, the court has ruled. But definitely this is a matter we want to take higher to the Supreme Court to challenge this ruling because we strongly feel that section 151 of the Electoral Act entitles us to have access to these materials.”