Tribunal orders INEC Chair, Zamfara REC to produce documents requested by Atiku Thursday

Presidential election tribunal Wednesday ordered the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)  Mahmoud Yakubu to produce documents on election results requested by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate, Atiku Abubakar.

Justice Mohammed Garba, who led the five-man panel of justices, said the documents must be produced before 12 noon on Thursday.

The panel also ordered the Zamfara resident electoral commissioner (REC) to produce results sheets of all the polling units in the state for the PDP.

The ruling was prior to an application by Chris Uche, a PDP counsel.

“Permit me to bring to your attention some preliminary issues. The subpoena dated 9th July on INEC chairman which we paid for has not been released to us,” Uche said.

“On the same 9th July another subpoena was on the REC Zamfara and we applied for all the EC8As. We paid for them and they refused to release them to us.”

The PDP counsel then asked the tribunal to assist them to get the documents.

While delivering the ruling, the panel noted that it was impossible for the INEC chairman and REC to produce the documents on the day they were served the subpoenas.

“We note that the INEC chairman and REC were asked to produce documents on the day they were served, that is impossible. They have been directed to produce documents in the subpoenas by 12 pm tomorrow,” Gerba said.

The petitioners are seeking to tender these documents as evidence.

INEC declared Buhari the winner of the election. He polled 15, 191, 847 votes while Abubakar, a former Nigerian vice president between 1999 and 2007, got 11, 262, 978 votes in March.

Atiku and PDP alleged the election was rigged and rejected the result.

PDP and Atiku claimed they won the election according to a result on INEC server.

The opposition party and its candidate contended that the data obtained from INEC’s server showed that they polled a total of 18,356,732 votes to defeat Buhari whom they said scored 16,741,430 votes.

But INEC told the tribunal that it had no server where the election results were transmitted during the February 23 presidential election.