The Peoples Democratic Party and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have withdrawn a fresh application they filed to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission to allow their agents to participate in the process of sorting out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 the PDP and Atiku, who are separately challenging the outcome of the election that was declared in favour of the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, told the Presidential Election Petition Court, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, that they wanted to discontinue the application.
When the motion ex parte, marked, CA/PEC/10M/2023, was called for hearing on Wednesday, Atiku, through his team of lawyers led by Joe Kyari Gadzama (SAN), 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, disclosed that the decision to withdraw the application was an outcome of a meeting his legal team held with the leadership of the electoral body on Tuesday.
He said initially the application was filed because of challenges and administrative bottlenecks they encountered at INEC office when they wanted access to the election materials as granted by the court.
“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,” he stated
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