Labour Party, Peter Obi’s Lawyers Storm INEC Office To Begin Inspection Of Presidential Election Materials

The legal team of the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, on Monday afternoon, met with the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission in Abuja over the inspection of electoral materials used for the February 25 presidential election.

The head of the legal team, Dr Livy Uzoukwu, led 60 lawyers into the meeting and would still brief journalists afterwards.

The meeting was held at the commission’s national headquarters.

The INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, assured the Labour Party’s legal team that the commission would provide all the documents it requested to prosecute its case.

He said, “INEC has nothing to hide. Documents available at the HQ will be given immediately. We are meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners today and we will discuss how other documents at the state level could also be made available to you speedily.”

“The Labour Party’s Legal Team was at the INEC HQ to discuss modalities for obtaining the documents,” the commission added in a tweet.

SaharaReporters had earlier reported that the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council, insisted that its supporters would not back down on their planned nationwide protest unless the INEC granted its lawyers access to materials from the contentious February 25 presidential election.

SaharaReporters had reported that the presidential and National Assembly elections were marred with irregularities such as late arrival of electoral materials, voter suppression, thuggery, and manipulation of election results among others.

Above all, the electoral umpire breached its guidelines and regulations for election and provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 and Nigeria’s constitution.

Since the February 25 elections, criticisms have continued to trail the conduct of the polls.

Following the accusations, both the Labour Party and Peoples Democratic Party presidential candidates approached the court to inspect all the electoral materials used during the poll.

However, the Court of Appeal granted the Labour Party’s requests for inspection of the electoral materials, but Nigeria’s electoral umpire has refused to grant the warring parties access to those materials.

It had been reported that last week, the Appeal Court granted INEC an injunction to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System machines ahead of the March 18 governorship and states Assembly elections.

However, the chief spokesman for the Obi campaign council, Yunusa Tanko, said there would be no going back on the mobilisation of their supporters to occupy INEC offices nationwide.

Tanko accused INEC of disobeying the order of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to grant Obi and the party access to the certified true copies of materials used in the conduct of the poll.