The Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, on Wednesday withdrew an application filed to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission to allow their agents to participate in the process of sorting out ballot papers that were used for the February 25 presidential election.
Both Atiku and PDP who are separately challenging the outcome of the election that was declared in favour of the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, told the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, that they were no longer interested in the application.
Reports has it that the decision was made after a meeting with officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday, March 14, 2023.
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When the motion ex-parte, marked: CA/PEC/10M/2023, was called up for hearing on Wednesday, Atiku, through his team of lawyers led by Joe Kyari Gadzama, told the court that he filed a notice of discontinuance.
Following this, Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led three-member panel struck out the application.
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,
“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”,
