Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the President-Elect, has petitioned the Court of Appeal for permission to view confidential materials utilized by the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the presidential election.
Tinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), received 8,794,726 votes, ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who received 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), who received 6,101,533 votes.
During yesterday’s court session, the President-elect, through his lawyer, Akintola Makinde, stated that he would need to inspect, scan, and make photocopies of the electoral materials in order to prepare his defense against petitions seeking to annul his election.
The respondents in the first ex parte application are LP, Obi, and INEC. PDP and Atiku are included as respondents in the second application, along with INEC.
On Friday, the two main opposition parties obtained court permission to access all sensitive materials utilized by INEC in the conduct of the poll. The court has ordered INEC not to tamper with the BVAS devices. On the same day, INEC petitioned the court for permission to reconfigure details on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices in preparation for the gubernatorial and State House of Assembly elections this Saturday. The Court of Appeal is the tribunal in charge of considering the presidential election dispute. The appellate court, presided over by a three-member bench led by Joseph Ikyegh, has set a ruling for today, seeking a review of its orders allowing Obi to scrutinize electoral materials used in the presidential election.
On the reopening of hearings in the dispute on Tuesday, INEC’s counsel, Tanimu Inuwa (SAN), sought the court to revisit an earlier judgment allowing the electoral umpire to modify the BVAS machines for deployment to Nigeria’s over 176,000 polling stations.
Nevertheless, Obi’s attorney, Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), disagreed with INEC. Ikpeazu claimed that changing the BVAS would change the data from the presidential and National Assembly elections stored on it. He pleaded with the court to reject INEC’s application.
Following hearing from the parties, the panel led by Judge Ikyegh deferred ruling on the subject until today. In a related event, the appellate court scheduled a hearing today on a similar application filed by INEC against Atiku and the PDP.
Atiku also obtained permission from the court to inspect the electoral materials used in the elections. Because Atiku’s lawyer, Emeka Etiaba (SAN), needed time to respond to INEC’s petition, the separate suit could not be heard on Tuesday.
In two separate ex parte cases, Atiku and Obi, along with their political parties, requested the court to compel INEC to allow them to receive records ustopresidential election in order to aid their petitions challenging the poll’s outcome.
In addition, the duo sought an injunction prohibiting INEC from “tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the proper inspection was done and Certified True Copies of them were provided.”
The court granted the appellants permission to scan and/or photocopy voter registration and ballot papers used in the presidential election.
