Court grants Atiku, Obi’s request to inspect election materials

The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Friday granted the separate ex-parte application filed by the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and the Labour Party’s Mr Peter Obi seeking permission from the court to inspect the electoral materials for last Saturday’s presidential election.

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 Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the winner of the presidential election, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as well as his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

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.

While Obi, in the application that was moved by his team of lawyers led by Mr Alex Ejesieme (SAN), sought six principal reliefs, Atiku’s lawyer, Mr Adedamola Faloku sought seven prayers from the tribunal.

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

They maintained that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of the candidate of the APC, Tinubu.

Recall that 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 Labour Party, who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.

Both the PDP and Labour Party had since rejected the outcome of the election while vowing to challenge it in court.