The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and its Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) would meet to work out modalities for the inspection of materials in the states.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, revealed this after he led the commission’s management team to meet the 60 lawyers legal team of the Labour Party (LP’s) legal team on Monday in Abuja.
Dr. Livy Uzoukwu led the 60 lawyers to the meeting.
He said “we received a letter from Uzoukwu (SAN) on behalf of the Labour Party. The letter is dated March 6, in the letter we were served notice that the team will be here on the seventh at nine in the morning to inspect the materials but most specifically, the letter requested us to get in touch with our resident electoral commissioners across the 37 states of the federation to make the documents and information available for the prosecution of their petition.
“A meeting has been scheduled with all the RECs and is going to be a virtual meeting at 3 pm, today, which we will discuss among other issues, this matter of providing CTCs not only to the Labour Party but to all other litigants as well.
“I want to assure you that the commission will not hide any document from anybody and will make available any document that they have requested,” Yakubu said.
He said there were two categories of documents those that are in possession of the headquarters of INEC, and that these documents would be made available to them.
“Specifically the EC8Ds from the states and the ECD A, which is the coalition at the national collection centre by the commission itself. The EC8E, the declaration, so many, a total of, I think 39 documents, that we can easily certify and give you almost immediately.
“As for other documents that we are asking for they are at state level, so we need to work out the schedule so that we know when your team is going to which state and on which date so that we can easily facilitate not just a certification of documents, but also the inspection that you requested for each of these documents,” Yakubu said.
The INEC boss also said that the other document is accreditation data from the back end and that this will also be made available to them.
He said, “Remember that the accreditation data covers over 176,000 polling units (PUs). We have to print them, physically certify them, and give them to you, so the tall and short of what I’m saying is that you will get this document speedily.
“They will also make arrangements and notify our RECs of your intended visit so that these documents will be made available to you those that are at the level, including access to the inspection of any category of materials.
“So I crave your indulgence to suggest that let your team interface with the legal team of the commission immediately. So you work these things out and then we make all the documents available to you.
“But please be assured, the lead counsel that INEC has nothing to hide. Whatever you’re asking for will be made available to you. So whatever we need to facilitate as a commission so that you get this document that you require as a matter of urgency, I want to assure you that you will get them as a matter of urgency.”
On his part, Dr. Livy Uzoukwu (SAN), said the team came to INEC because they had not received any electoral stocks for inspection on behalf of their clients, and especially because the election petition is time sensitive.
“We have 21 days to file a petition on behalf of our clients. Out of those 21 days we probably have about 10 days to go and up till now we have not received any documents. We have written to INEC requesting for documents apart from that.
“The Court of Appeal made an order on March 3, to INEC to release those documents to us but we haven’t received any hence we requested for a meeting with the chairman of the commission.
He graciously granted that audience within very short notice, and he has given us assurance, concrete assurance on record that all documents we require will be made available and if possible, some of them will be made available to us today.
“So we believe that that will happen and we are leaving here rest assured that by the time we leave INEC premises at least, we will leave with some documents, the rest can then come from tomorrow and so on and so forth,” Uzoukwu said.
