Atiku tenders INEC’s BVAS documents before presidential election court

Tamarauemi Ebimini

The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, on Tuesday, tendered tons of electoral documents before the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja where he is challenging President Bola Tinubu’s victory in the 25 February 25 election.

Atiku is prosecuting a petition seeking to upturn Mr Tinubu’s victory on account of substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022 and the constitution, among other complaints.

Nigeria’s electoral commission, INEC, declared Mr Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as Nigeria’s president-elect on 1 March, after he defeated Atiku who came second in the race.

Another petition by the candidate who came third in the election, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, is also pending before the court. The third petition was filed by a party, the Allied Peoples’ Movement (APM), which polled inconsequential number of votes in the election.

Mr Tinubu was sworn in as Nigeria’s president on Monday, while aggrieved parties continue pursuing their separate cases to challenge his victory.

Atiku and the PDP jointly filed a petition before the court against Mr Tinubu, the Vice President Kashim Shettima, the APC, and INEC.

In aid of their suit, the petitioners Tuesday presented tons of electoral documents comprising data from the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines that were deployed for the conduct of the 25 February presidential election.

At the beginning of hearing on Tuesday, Atiku’s lawyer, Eyitayo Jegede, tendered printouts of data from the BVAS machines comprising polling units results sheets from the 36 states of the country and Abuja.

Mr Jegede, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), informed the five-member panel of the court chaired by Haruna Tsammani that the documents were certified true copies of the data obtained from the BVAS machines.

The lawyer also tendered records of collected permanent voters cards from the electoral umpire.

Earlier, Mr Jegede tendered the final results of the presidential election that declared Mr Tinubu president-elect.

Owing to the agreement reached by the lawyers to parties in the suit not to object to official documents obtained from INEC, respondents’ lawyers – Wole Olanipekun (Mr Tinubu), APC’s lawyer, Lateef Fagbemi for APC, and INEC’s Abubakar Mahmoud did not object to the documents.

Thereafter, the suit was adjourned until Wednesday for further hearing.