President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu is seeking an order from the Court of Appeal to access sensitive materials used by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the 25 February presidential election.
With 8,794,726 votes, Tinubu, who was candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), won the poll ahead of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Mr Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party, who secured 6,101,533 votes.
At the court session on Tuesday, Tinubu, through his lawyer, Mr 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.
In the first ex parte application, the Labour Party and Obi, and INEC are the respondents.
In the second application, the PDP, and its candidate, are cited as respondents, alongside INEC.
The appellate court’s three-member panel has fixed a ruling for Wednesday.
Last Friday, the two main opposition parties – PDP and Labour Party – secured leave of the court to have access to all the sensitive materials used by the INEC in the conduct of the election.
The Court of Appeal serves as the tribunal for hearing the presidential election dispute.
