Court Grants Tinubu Permission To Inspect Electoral Materials To Defend His Victory

The Abuja division of the Court of Appeal has granted the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, permission to inspect February 25, 2023 election materials.

 

A panel of the appellate court made the order on Wednesday after the court heard the ex parte applications filed by the president-elect and his party.

 

On March 1, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, declared Tinubu the winner of the presidential election.

 

He polled 8.8 million votes to defeat both Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party presidential candidates respectively.

 

Atiku had 6,984,520 votes while Obi polled 6,101,533 votes.

 

The opposition candidates have approached the court to challenge Tinubu’s victory.

 

In his ex parte application marked: CA/PEC/02M/23, Obi through his team of lawyers led by Alex Ejesieme, sought six principal reliefs.

 

Atiku, in his application filed through his lawyer, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven reliefs from the court.

 

Specifically, the applicants pleaded with the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.

 

They submitted that the records would support their petition challenging Tinubu’s victory.

 

They also obtained an order granting them leave to file the application, outside or before the pre-hearing session of the substantive petitions.

 

INEC, Tinubu, and the APC are the respondents in the suit.