By John Ikani
The Court of Appeal Abuja has granted the request of the Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, to access all the sensitive materials used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the presidential election held on February 25.
The orders were made by a panel of the appellate court, headed by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, after it heard two separate ex parte applications filed by the two presidential candidates along with their political parties.
INEC, the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), were cited as respondents in the matter.
The applicants relied on Section 146 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, Paragraph 47 (1, 2, and 3) of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act of 2022, and the inherent jurisdiction of the court as referenced by Section 6 (6) (a) and (b) of the 1999 constitution, as amended, to make their case.
Alex Ejesieme, who moved the application on behalf of Obi, sought six principal reliefs, while Atiku’s lawyer, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal.
The applicants requested that the court compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody used for the presidential election, stating that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest declared in favour of Tinubu.
INEC declared Tinubu of the APC as the winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates who 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.
The PDP and LP have both rejected the outcome of the election and vowed to challenge it in court.
