The Court of Appeal in Abuja on Wednesday ordered the Independent National Electoral (INEC) to allow Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Tinubu, to inspect electoral materials used for the conduct of the presidential election.
During the hearing of the application, the President-elect’s lawyer, Akintola Makinde, prayed the appellate court to grant him leave “to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials” to enable him prepare his defence against Atiku and Mr. Obi’s challenge at the tribunal.
“The materials will be relevant in helping us to prepare our defence and also make comparison with the information contained in INEC’s back-end server,” Mr Makinde said while moving the ex parte request.
At the court session on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the court led by Joseph Ikyegh, granted the applicant’s permission to inspect INEC materials and make photocopies of them.
Tinubu filed the application alongside his party, the APC.
Recall that Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the February 25 poll with 8,794,726 votes, ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), who secured 6,101,533 votes.
Atiku and Obi are contesting the outcome of the election results alongside their political parties.
They obtained the same permission from the court to inspect sensitive electoral materials that were used in the conduct of the election.
Although INEC is seeking the court’s order to vary the permission earlier granted the PDP and LP presidential flag bearers.
The electoral umpire argued that it needed to reconfigure the BVAS machines for the conduct of Saturday, 11 March governorship and state parliamentary election.