Nigeria’s electoral body, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has denied being in possession of a server where results of the February 23 presidential election were uploaded.
The electoral umpire made this known on Thursday at the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal in Abuja.
INEC said this after the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the election, Atiku Abubakar, and his party, had asked the tribunal to compel INEC to grant them access to the server and smart card readers used in the conduct of the election.
Atiku and the PDP made the request through their lawyers led by Levy Uzoukwu (SAN).
However, counsel to INEC, Yunus Ustaz Usman (SAN), in a counter affidavit asked the court to dismiss the application.
“They are asking us to bring something we don’t have,” he said.
He drew the attention of the tribunal to its judgment on March 6 granting PDP access to inspect only election materials without the server.
As for counsel to President Muhammadu Buhari, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), and that of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Lateef Fagnemi (SAN), they asked the court to dismiss the application for failing to disclose the existence of the server.
INEC had announced Buhari winner of the election with 15,191,847 votes with Atiku getting 11, 262,978.
But Atiku and the PDP, this news medium understands, had claimed that results from the INEC server showed that he scored 18,356,732 as against Buhari’s 16,741,430 votes.
