The Presidential Election Tribunal on Monday dismissed the request by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its candidate in February’s presidential election, Atiku Abubakar to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission  to allow them access to the server used by the Commission for the election.

In a ruling on the application, the five-member panel unanimously refused the request, saying that the request could not be granted because issues had been joined by parties over the existence or otherwise of the server.

The judges said it was impossible for the Tribunal to delve into the server issue at the interlocutory stage of the panel’s sittings.

The PDP and Alhaji Abubakar, through their lawyers led by Levy Uzoukwu 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.

However, in a counter affidavit, the counsel representing INEC, Yunus Usman asked the court to dismiss the application.

Usman further called the attention of the Tribunal to its judgment of March 6 which granted the opposition party access to inspect only election materials without the server.

The PDP and Abubakar are challenging the declaration of President Buhari of the All Progressives Congress  as the winner of the election, claiming that the results they obtained from the INEC server indicated that Abubakar won the poll with a wide margin.

Abubakar had said that results from the INEC server showed that he scored 18,356,732 votes as against the 16,741,430 votes polled by Buhari. INEC had announced President Buhari winner of the election with 15,191,847 votes while Abubakar was said to have polled 11, 262,978 votes.