Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s (LP) presidential candidate, has been granted access to all sensitive materials utilized by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC) in the 25 February poll.
The court also granted the same injunction to People’s Democratic Party presidential contender Atiku Abubakar (PDP).
The orders were issued on Friday by a panel of the appellate court chaired by Joseph Ikyegh after the court heard two separate ex parte applications brought by the two disgruntled candidates and their political parties.
Mahmood Yakubu, chairman of INEC, declared Bola Tinubu, candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the winner of the poll on Wednesday. Tinubu received 8,794,721 votes.
Atiku had 6,984,520 votes while Obi polled 6,101,533 votes.
The opposition candidates have declared their determination to file a legal challenge against the outcome.
In his ex parte application bearing the designation CA/PEC/02M/23, Obi, represented by a team of attorneys led by Alex Ejesieme, requested six primary reliefs.
In an application submitted by his attorney Adedamola Faloku, Atiku requested seven court orders.
In particular, the applicants petitioned the court to order INEC to provide them access to election-related records in its control.
They said that the evidence supported their petition to contest Tinubu’s victory.
They also secured an order providing them permission to file the application outside or before the substantive petitions’ pre-hearing session.
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INEC, Tinubu, and the APC are the parties named as respondents in the lawsuit.
