The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja, has granted the request of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential aspirant, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Mr Peter Obi, to check the election materials used during last Saturday’s presidential poll.
Atiku and Obi had approached the Tribunal seeking consent for the view of election materials used during last Saturday’s poll.
Shortly after the results of the election were declared, Atiku and Obi refused to concede defeat in the February 25 presidential election, independently protesting they that they won the election and promising to recover their mandate in court.
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The two aspirants rebuffed the gesture of reconciliation made by the President- elect, Bola 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.
But the Tribunal on Friday granted both aspirants ’requests to have access to all the sensitive materials INEC deployed for the presidential election won by All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential aspirant, Bola 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 judge, Tinubu and APC were listed as Respondents in the matter.
Both applications were based 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 essential governance of the Court as validated by Section 6 (6) A & amp; B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
Obi, in his application that was moved by his team of advocates led by Mr Alex Ejesieme, SAN, sought six top reliefs.
Atiku’s counsel, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal.
Specifically, the aspirants urged the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.
They maintained that the requested documents would help their petition against the aftermath of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of Tinubu.
