Court Grants Obi, Atiku Access To Inspect Election Materials

There were early legal fireworks on Friday as the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja granted the reliefs sought by the candidate of Labour Party, LP, Peter Obi, and his counterpart in the People Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar to inspect election materials for last Saturday’s contentious presidential election.

Both Obi and Atiku rejected the outcome of the election which was held alongside the national assembly elections.

It was earlier reported that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, had declared Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, winner of the election.

INEC Chairman, Mahmoud Yakubu announced on Wednesday morning that Tinubu polled 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 the LP and PDP candidates approached the court via an ex-parte motions filed at the Presidential Election Court at the Court of Appeal, listing INEC, Tinubu and the APC as the first, second and third respondent, requesting to inspect all the election materials in the custody of the INEC.

Obi’s team of lawyers is led by Alex Ejesieme(SAN), sought six principal reliefs, while Adedamola Faloku (SAN) who is leading Atiku’s team sought seven prayers from the tribunal.

Specifically, they sought complete delivery and inspection of all election materials to aid their case pursuant to Section 146 (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.

After full consideration, the panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh made the orders after separately hearing the two separate ex parte applications.

It ordered the INEC to allow the applicants access to the election materials in full including and specifically the sensitive materials and all other materials thereto.