Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Friday ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to allow the candidates of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart, Peter Obi of the Labour Party, LP, access to inspect the
sensitive materials the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, deployed for the conduct of the presidential election of February 25.
The appellate court, will serve as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.
The panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, gave the orders when it heard two separate ex-parte applications the two aggrieved presidential candidates filed alongside their political parties.
The 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.
The presidential candidates relied 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, to file their applications.
Labour Party, presidential candidate Obi, in his application represented by his team of lawyers, led by Mr Alex Ejesieme, SAN, are asking for six principal reliefs, while Atiku’s lawyer, Mr Adedamola Faloku, is seeking seven prayers from the tribunal.
The applicants are appealing the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.
According to them, the requested documents would assist them in their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of the candidate of the APC, Tinubu.
Recall that INEC declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC as the winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election.
In the results announced by INEC, Tinubu pulled a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku, who scored a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Both PDP and LP refused to sign the result sheets and rejected the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the election, stressing that they would challenge it in court.