Touchaheart Nigeria reports that the 2023 Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has on Friday, 3 March 2023, obtained permission from the Court of Appeal, which had a hearing in Abuja, to access every sensitive document used by INEC to conduct the February 25 presidential election.
The appellate court, which will act as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, also mandated that the electoral body give Atiku Abubakar, the PDP’s presidential candidate, access to the election materials.
The orders were made by a panel of the appellate court chaired by Justice Joseph Ikyegh after it heard two separate ex parte applications that the two presidential candidates who were unhappy with the outcome filed jointly with their political parties.
Bola Tinubu, the widely acknowledged winner of the presidential election, and his political party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, were named as respondents in the case.
Both requests were supported by Section 146 (1) of the Electoral Act of 2022, Paragraphs 47 (1, 2 & 3) of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act of 2022, as well as the Court’s inherent jurisdiction as referred to in Sections 6 (6) A & B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
Atiku’s attorney, Mr. Adedamola Faloku, asked the tribunal for seven prayers, while Obi’s team of attorneys, led by Mr. Alex Ejesieme (SAN), asked the tribunal for six main reliefs.
The applicants specifically sought the court to order INEC to let them receive records that were in its possession and used for the presidential election.
They insisted that the requested papers would support their case challenging the APC candidate, Tinubu, as the winner of the presidential election.
Recall that out of the 17 candidates that ran for president, INEC had pronounced Tinubu of the APC the winner of the election.
According to INEC, Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes in total, defeating Atiku, who received 6,984,520 votes, and Obi of the LP, who received 6,101,533 votes overall to finish third.
Since then, Peter Obi and Atiku have both declared their rejection of the election’s results and their intention to take it to court.
