THE Appeal Court sitting in Abuja has granted the request of the President-Elect, Bola Tinubu, to inspect materials used for the February 25 Presidential Election.
Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), had approached the court with two ex parte applications, seeking an order to get access to sensitive materials used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the election.
Tinubu, through his lawyer Akintola Makinde, on Tuesday, March 7, said he would need to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the materials to enable him to prepare his defence against petitions that would seek to nullify his election.
“The materials will be relevant in helping us to prepare our defence and also make comparison with the information contained in INEC’s backend server,” Makinde said.
In the first ex parte application, the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi and INEC are the respondents. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Atiku Abubakar are cited as respondents in the second application, alongside INEC.
In four rulings issued on Wednesday, March 8, a three-member panel of the appellate court granted the reliefs Tinubu and the APC had requested in their fourth ex-parte application, except requests 5 and 6.
The LP and the PDP had on March 3 secured leave of the court to access all sensitive materials used by INEC in the conduct of the election.
The Court of Appeal is the first to deal with Presidential election issues.
INEC, on Wednesday, March 1, declared Tinubu winner of the presidential poll.
The Chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, announced that Tinubu won with 8,794,726 votes while Atiku finished second with 6,984,520 votes.
Obi followed closely with 6,101,533 votes, while Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) came 4th with 1,496,687 votes, according to the result released by INEC.
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