Court directs INEC to grant Obi, Atiku access to inspect election materials

Peter Obi, presidential candidate for the Labour Party, has obtained permission from the Court of Appeal in Abuja on Friday to view all of the sensitive materials used by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) to conduct the presidential election on February 25.

The electoral board was also directed to give the Peoples Democratic Party‘s (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar access to the election documents by the appellate court, which would act as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.

A panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh made the orders after it heard two separate ex-parte applications the two aggrieved presidential candidates filed alongside their political parties.

Cited as Respondents in the matter were INEC, the acclaimed winner of the presidential election, Bola Tinubu, as well as his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Read also:Six States approach Supreme Court to nullify INEC’s declaration of Tinubu as president-elect

Both applications were predicated on Section146 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, Paragraph 47 (1, 2 &3) of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act of 2022, as well as under the inherent jurisdiction of the Court as referenced by Section 6 (6) A & B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

Obi, in his application that was moved by his team of lawyers led by Mr Alex Ejesieme, SAN, sought six principal reliefs from the tribunal.

He specifically sought the court to order INEC to let them receive records that were in its possession and used for the presidential election.

Furthermore, Obi insisted that the requested papers would support their case challenging the APC candidate, Tinubu, as the winner of the presidential election.

INEC had declared Tinubu of the APC as the winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election.

According to INEC, Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku who polled a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.

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