In first move for legal battle, the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi has been granted leave to access sensitive materials by the Court of Appeal.
The approval on Friday followed LP’s request to inspect INEC’s sensitive materials following a declaration that the All Progressives Congress, APC’s presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu won the election.
The appealate Court of which serves as the Presidential Election Tribunal directed the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC to allow access to its sensitive materials which were used for the election.
Also, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar was granted leave by the Court to have access and inspect the sensitive materials too.
The Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led appealate Court acted based on two separate ex parte applications the two aggrieved presidential candidates filed alongside their political parties.
Cited as 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.
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 his 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 to 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.
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.
Both Peter Obi and Atiku had since rejected the outcome of the election and vowed to challenge it in court.
