March 13 (THEWILL) – The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has assured the Labour Party’s legal team that it will provide all the documents it requested to prosecute its case before the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), sitting at the Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal.
Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, gave the assurance on Monday, when the legal team of the LP visited the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja, to discuss modalities for obtaining the documents.
“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 EC8E, the declaration, so many, a total of I think 39 documents, we can easily certify and give you almost immediately.
“As for other documents that you are asking for, they are at the state level. So, we need to work out the schedule so that we know when your team is going to which state and on which date, so that we can easily facilitate not just the certification of documents, but also the inspection of these documents that you requested.
“The other one is accreditation data from the back end. This will also be made available to you. Remember that the accreditation data covers over 176,000 polling units.
“We have to print them physically to certify them and give them to you. So the tall and short of what I’m saying is that you will get this document speedily.
“They will also make arrangements and notify our Resident Electoral Commissioners of your intended visit so that these documents will be made available to you, including access to the inspection of any category of materials.
“So, I crave your indulgence to suggest that let your team interface with the legal team of the Commission immediately. So, you work these things out and then we make all the documents available to you.
“But, please be assured, the lead counsel, that INEC has nothing to hide. Whatever you are asking for will be made available to you,” Prof. Yakubu told the team.
THEWILL reports that INEC had granted the LP access to the election materials that were used for the February 25, 2023, presidential and the National Assembly elections.
Recall that the LP had rejected the results of the presidential election, which produced the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the president-elect.
The PEPC had, last week, granted leave to the LP presidential candidate, Peter Obi, to have access to all the sensitive materials used by INEC in the February 25 elections.
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