justification for declaring the results of the election of the president without
reference to Forms 34A? How was it a basis for the reconfiguration of Form
34C so as to render Forms 34A irrelevant in the final computation of the
results? But most critically, how did the Court of Appeal’s decision relieve
the 1st respondent from its statutory responsibility of electronically
transmitting in the prescribed form, the tabulated results of an election for
the president from a polling station to the CTC and to the NTC in
accordance with Section 39(1C) of the Elections Act?
[266] At the end of the day, neither the 1st nor the 2nd respondent had
offered any plausible response to the question as to whether all Forms 34A
had been electronically transmitted to the NTC as required by Section 39
(1C) of the Elections Act. What remained uncontroverted however, was the
admission by Ezra Chiloba, that as of 14th August 2017, three days after the
declaration of results, the 1st respondent was not in a position to supply the
petitioner with all Forms 34A. Counsel for the 1st and 2nd respondents, by
insisting that the presidential results were declared on the basis of Forms
34B, all of which were available, also implicitly admitted that not all Forms
34A were available by the time the 2nd respondent declared the “final
results “ for the election of the president.
[267] In addition to the above and relevant to this aspect of the petition,
pursuant to an application by the petitioners, the Court issued an order
requiring the 1st respondent to supply the petitioners and the 3rd
respondent with all the scanned and transmitted Forms 34A and 34B from
all the 40, 883 polling stations on a read only basis with the option to copy
in soft version. Had the Court’s Order been complied with, it would have
Presidential
Petition
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of
2017
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