A three-member panel of Nigeria’s Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has granted the request by the President-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his party, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to inspect materials used for the February 25 presidential election.
The panel, in four rulings on Wednesday, granted the reliefs sought by Tinubu and APC in the fourth motions ex-parte, except prayers 5 and 6 in the motion filed by Tinubu.
With 8,794,726 votes, Tinubu was declared winner of the February 25 poll ahead of Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who polled 6,984,520 votes, and Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), who secured 6,101,533 votes.
At the court session on Tuesday, the President-elect, through his lawyer, Akintola Makinde, said he wants to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials to enable him prepare his defence against petitions that would seek to nullify his election.
“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.
In the first ex parte application, LP, Obi and INEC are the respondents. In the second application, PDP and Atiku are cited as respondents, alongside INEC.
The two main opposition parties, on Friday, secured leave of the court to have access to all sensitive materials used by INEC in the conduct of the election. The court had restrained INEC from tampering with the BVAS machines.
