The Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi, have been granted approval to inspect the election materials used during last Saturday’s presidential poll.
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Friday granted the leave following a request to that effect by both Atiku and Obi.
Atiku and Obi made good their decision to head to the Presidential Election Court to get approval to inspect election materials used during last Saturday’s poll.
They are to inspect all the sensitive materials INEC deployed for the presidential election won by All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu.
They said the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of Tinubu.
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.
The electoral umpire, Tinubu and APC were cited as respondents in the matter.
Both applications were predicated on Section146 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, Paragraph 47 (1, 2 &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 & B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
Obi, in his application that was moved by his team of lawyers led by Mr. Alex Ejesieme, SAN, sought six principal reliefs.
Atiku’s lawyer, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal among which is to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.
Atiku and Obi had rejected the results of the February 25 presidential election as announced by the INEC, vowing to recover their mandate in court.
The two candidates rebuffed the gesture of conciliation made by the President-elect, Tinubu, who in his acceptance speech after he was declared the winner of the poll on Wednesday, asked them to support him in the task of building the nation.
Atiku and Obi spoke at separate news conferences in Abuja on Thursday.
