Presidential Tribunal Compels INEC Chairman to Appear

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in a subpoena has ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu to appear before it unfailingly by noon on Friday.

The order was the climax of four months of failure by INEC to respond to several requests by the petitioners, PDP and its Presidential candidate for essential documents in the Commission’s custody in defiance of the law making it mandatory to produce the documents on demand.

The Tribunal rebuffed frantic efforts by INEC counsel, Ustaz Usman Yunus, SAN to explain away the continued failure of INEC to do the needful after Atiku’s counsel Dr Chris Uche drew attention of the Tribunal to INEC’s disregard of several repeated requests to provide the documents in spite of acknowledging receipt of the letters.

Both INEC and its Chairman had earlier been in a fix over the debunking of initial claims that the Commission had no server for receiving electronically transmitted election results whereas evidence before the Tribunal proved the contrary.

The INEC Counsel, Ustaz Yunus Usman (SAN) was the first to make the claim that INEC has no server when he remarked in an out of court interview that INEC was being forcefully linked with having a server.