Presidential Poll: A’Court okays Obi, Atiku’s request to inspect election materials

BY ANDREW OROLUA

The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Friday granted access to the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, Mr. Peter Obi, to all the sensitive materials the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, deployed for the conduct of the presidential election that held on February 25.

The appellate court, which will sit as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, further ordered the electoral body to also grant the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, access to the election materials.

A normal panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh made the orders after it heard two separate ex-parte applications of the two aggrieved presidential candidates filed alongside their political parties. But the Court of Appeal as yesterday has not yet select members of the justices that would sit on the Presidential panel.

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.

Obi’s application marked: CA/PEC/02M/23, was moved by his team of lawyers led by Mr. Alex Ejesieme, SAN, asked for six principal reliefs, on the other hand, Atiku’s lawyer, Mr. Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the court.

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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 candidate of the APC, Tinubu.

Obi and Atiku also on Friday obtained another order of the court granting them leave to file the application, outside or before the pre-hearing session of the planned substantive petitions.

It will be recalled that INEC had declared Tinubu of the APC as 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 LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.

Both PDP and LP had since rejected the outcome of the election and vowed to challenge it in court.

Addressing the media, Obi and his running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, insisted had that they won the 2023 presidential election.

They expressed their readiness to reclaim a mandate they said was given to them by Nigerians, through the court.

“We’ll explore all legal options to retrieve our mandate.

“We won the election. I’m fully committed to a better future for the country, and nothing can stop that,” Obi added.