Tribunal grants Atiku, Obi’s request to inspect INEC’s election materials

The court of appeal has granted leave to Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party  (LP), to have access to all the sensitive materials used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the election held on February 25.

The court also granted the same order to Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

A panel of the appellate court led by Joseph Ikyegh made the orders on Friday after the court heard two separate ex parte applications filed by the two aggrieved candidates and their political parties.

On Wednesday, Mahmood Yakubu, chairperson of INEC, announced Bola Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the winner of the election with 8,794,726 votes.

 Atiku had 6,984,520 votes while Obi polled 6,101,533 votes.

The opposition candidates have expressed their intention to challenge the result in court.

In his ex parte application marked: CA/PEC/02M/23, Obi through his team of lawyers led by Alex Ejesieme, sought six principal reliefs.

Atiku, in his application filed through his lawyer, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven reliefs from the court.

Specifically, the applicants prayed the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.

They submitted that the records would support their petition challenging Tinubu’s victory.

They also obtained an order granting them leave to file the application, outside or before the pre-hearing session of the substantive petitions.

INEC, Tinubu, and the APC are the respondents in the suit.