CITIZENS COMPASS- THE Appeal Court sitting in Abuja has granted the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, access to inspect electoral materials used by the Independent National Electoral Commission during February 25, 2022, general elections.
The PUNCH reports that Tinubu, the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, on Tuesday, urged the Court of Appeal in Abuja to order INEC to grant him access to sensitive materials it used for the presidential election.
Tinubu, through his lawyer, Mr Akintola Makinde, said he would need to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials to enable him to prepare prepare his defence against petitions that would seek to nullify his election.
While Tinubu’s first ex-parte application, which was filed on March 6, has the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi as respondents, in the second application, the Peoples Democratic Party, and its candidate, Atiku Abubakar, were cited as respondents, alongside INEC.
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,” Makinde said.
But delivering judgment on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the court, in four rulings on Wednesday granted the reliefs sought by Tinubu and APC in the fourth motion ex-parte, except prayers 5 and 6 in the motion filed by Tinubu.
With 8,794,726 votes, Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the February 25 poll 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.
Both Atiku and Obi have approached the court to challenge the results of the election.
They have also asked the court to grant them permission to inspect sensitive materials used by the INEC in the conduct of the election.
