Just In: Tinubu seeks court order to inspect INEC materials to defend his election

Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president-elect, is seeking an order from the court of appeal to access sensitive materials used by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the presidential election.

With  8,794,726 votes, Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the February 25 poll ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), who secured 6,101,533 votes.

At the court session on Tuesday, the president-elect, through his lawyer, Akintola Makinde, said he would need to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral 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 back-end server,” Makinde said.

In the first ex parte application, the Labour Party and Obi, its presidential candidate, and INEC are the respondents.

In the second application, the PDP, and its candidate, Abubakar, are cited as respondents, alongside INEC.

The appellate court presided over by a three-member panel has fixed a ruling for Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the two main opposition parties on Friday, secured leave of the court to have access to all the sensitive materials used by the INEC in the conduct of the election.

The court of appeal serves as the tribunal for hearing the presidential election dispute.

Credit: TheCable