The Presidential candidate of People’s Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and his party, PDP, has withdrawn the fresh application they filed to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to permit their agents to participate in the process of sorting out ballot papers that were used for the presidential election that held on February 25.
During the hearing on Wednesday, when the motion ex-parte, marked: CA/PEC/10M/2023, was called up for hearing, Atiku, through his team of lawyers led by Mr. Joe Kyari Gadzama, SAN, told the court that he filed a notice of discontinuance.
According to Gadzama, Atiku’s decision to withdraw the application was a fallout of a meeting his legal team had with the leadership of the electoral body on Tuesday.
Atiku told the Presidential Election Petition Court sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, that they were no longer interested in the application.
“We filed the application owing to challenges and administrative bottlenecks we encountered at the INEC office when we went for access to the election materials as ordered by the court.
“However, before the application 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 for, 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”, a member of Atiku’s legal team, who did not want his name mentioned because he was not authorized to speak on the matter said.
PDP and Atiku, are challenging the declaration of the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, as the winner of the February 25 Presidential elections. was declared the winner of the election.
