President-elect Bola Tinubu, has approached the Court of Appeal to seek an order to access sensitive materials used by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the conduct of the February 25, 2023 presidential election.
The Court of Appeal Abuja had on March 3 granted the requests of Obi and Atiku to have access to all the sensitive materials INEC deployed for the conduct of the presidential election.
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 contest that was declared in favour of the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu.
INEC also filled a suit asking the Presidential Election Petition Court to vary the orders which were earlier granted.
In a motion on notice filed on March 4, the electoral body is praying the court to vary the order which restrained it from tampering with materials used for the election.
The commission said it needed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the next round of elections.
However, at the court session on Tuesday, the president-elect, through his lawyer, Akintola Makinde, said he would need to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials to enable him to 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.