The Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi on Friday got the nod to inspect the election materials used during last Saturday’s presidential poll.
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja gave the approval on Friday.
Atiku and Obi had refused to concede defeat in the February 25 presidential election; in a separate news conference, both men vowed to recover their mandate in court.
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 Independent National Electoral Commission, Tinubu and APC were respondents in the matter.
Both applications were predicated 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 inherent jurisdiction of the Court as referenced by Section 6 (6) A & B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
Obi, in his application that was moved by his team of lawyers led by Mr Alex Ejesieme, SAN, sought six principal reliefs.
Atiku’s lawyer, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal.
Specifically, the applicants 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 aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential election.
