The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has granted the request of the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, to inspect the election materials used during the February 25, 2023 presidential poll.
The Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led Appeal Court panel granted the request of both candidates on Friday after hearing two separate ex-parte applications brought by Atiku, Obi and their political parties.
By this, the candidates will now have access to all the sensitive materials deployed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the presidential election in which candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was declared winner.
INEC had in the early hours of Wednesday announced Tinubu winner of the February 25 presidential election whose outcome has been trailed by controversy.
But Atiku and Obi and their political parties are contesting the declaration of Tinubu as winner, declaring their readiness to reclaim their mandate in court.
At a world press conference in Abuja on Thursday, Obi insisted that his party won the election that was announced in favour of the APC candidate, vowing to approach the courts to upturn the declaration of Tinubu as winner of the election..
“We won the election and we will prove that we won it. We will use every peaceful and legal option to reclaim our mandate,” he said.
As a first step, both candidates had, therefore, approached the Presidential Election Court to seek permission to inspect election materials used during the election.
Atiku’s application filed by his lawyer on March 1, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal, while Obi’s application, filed by his team of lawyers led by Alex Ejesieme (SAN) on March 2, sought six principal reliefs.
Both applications, which cited INEC, Tinubu and APC as Respondents in the matter, 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.
Specifically, the applicants urged the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election, maintaining that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest which was declared in favour of Tinubu.
