A panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh has issued orders following two separate ex parte applications made by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi.
The applicants had asked the court to allow them to have access to all the sensitive materials the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) deployed for the conduct of the presidential election held on February 25.
Respondents in the petition include INEC, the President-Elect Bola Tinubu and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Atiku and Obi believe the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of Tinubu.
The applications were based on several legal provisions, including Section 146 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, Paragraph 47 (1, 2, and 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) and (b) of the 1999 constitution, as amended.
Atiku’s lawyer, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal, while Obi, in his application moved by Alex Ejesieme, sought six principal reliefs.
INEC declared Tinubu of the APC as the winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election. According to INEC, Tinubu scored a total of 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 PDP and LP rejected the outcome of the election and vowed to challenge it in court.
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