Tinubu gets court order to inspect election materials

The Court of Appeal in Abuja on Wednesday ordered the Independent National Electoral (INEC) to allow the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, to inspect election materials used for the conduct of the presidential election.

INEC conducted the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25.

The INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, on March 1 declared Tinubu who is the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) winner of the election with 8.8 million votes to beat Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) who came second and third in the election.

In the ruling on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal led by Joseph Ikyegh, said “After reading the applicants motion exparte, I am satisfied that there is substance in the application. I accordingly grant him leave to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials.”

Tinubu had filed an ex parte application on Tuesday, urging the court to allow him to have access to the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System machines which were used in the conduct of the election.

Tinubu said he needed this in preparation for his defence at the Presidential Election Petition Court, should Atiku and Obi file a formal petition to challenge his victory.

During the hearing of the application, the President-elect’s lawyer, Akintola Makinde, prayed the appellate court to grant him leave “to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials” to enable him prepare his defence against Atiku and Mr Obi’s challenge at the tribunal.

“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 while moving the ex parte request.

Tinubu filed the application alongside his party, the APC.

In a related development, Atiku and Mr Obi alongside their political parties have obtained the same permission from the court to inspect sensitive electoral materials that were used in the conduct of the election.

Although INEC is seeking the court’s order to vary the permission earlier granted the PDP and LP presidential flag bearers.

The electoral umpire argued that it needed to reconfigure the BVAS machines for the conduct of Saturday, 11 March governorship and state parliamentary election.