By Promise Eze
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.
The Cable reports that 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 defense against petitions that would seek to nullify his election.
“The materials will be relevant in helping us to prepare our defense and also make comparison with the information contained in INEC’s back-end server,” Makinde said.
With 8,794,726 votes, Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was declared the winner of the 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.
While Tinubu’s first ex-parte application, which was filed on March 6, has the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi as respondents, in the second application, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its own candidate, Atiku Abubakar, were cited as respondents, alongside INEC.
The appellate court, which will sit as the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, deferred ruling on Tinubu’s application till Wednesday.
