Court grants Tinubu permission to inspect INEC materials to defend his election

The court of appeal has granted an application by Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, seeking an order to access sensitive materials used by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the presidential election.

Tinubu through his lawyer, Akintola Makinde, said he would need to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials to enable him to prepare his defence against petitions that would seek to nullify his election.

“The materials will be relevant in helping us to prepare our defence and also make comparison with the information contained in INEC’s back-end server,” Makinde said.

At the court session on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the court led by Joseph Ikyegh, granted the applicant’s permission to inspect INEC materials and make photocopies of them.

With  8,794,726 votes, Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the February 25 poll ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), who secured 6,101,533 votes.

Both Atiku and Obi have approached the court to challenge the results of the election.

They have also asked the court to grant them permission to inspect sensitive materials used by the INEC in the conduct of the election.