The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has on Friday 3rd of march 2023, granted the request of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and that of Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, the request to inspect the election materials deployed during the February 25, 2023, presidential election. Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Wednesday 1st of March 2023 declared All Progressives Congress (APC), presidential candidate Bola Tinubu the winner of the presidential election after amassing a total of 8,794,726.
However, closest rivals, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi have refused to acknowledge the INEC declaration stating that the process in which the APC candidate was brought in was faulty and have refused to concede defeat. The PDP and LP candidates approached to Presidential Election Court (PEC) to seek permission for the inspection of election materials used during last Saturday’s poll.
The appellate court on Friday granted both candidates' request to have access to all the sensitive materials INEC deployed for the presidential election. The Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led panel of the appellate court, which will also sit as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, granted the request after it heard two separate ex-parte applications brought by Atiku, Obi and their political parties.
Both applications were predicated on 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.
The applicants urged the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election. They noted that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential election.
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