The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Monday, granted the Labour Party (LP) access to the election materials used for the February 25, 2023 Presidential and the National Assembly elections.
This followed earlier threats by the party to embark on a nationwide protest and occupy INEC offices nationwide, if the commission remained adamant on the issue.
Recall that the Court of Appeal in Abuja had on March 3, granted an order for the party and the Peoples Democratic Party ( PDP) to have access to the materials.
BusinessDay gathered that following the threats, the electoral umpire invited the party to meet with Mahmoud Yakubu, the INEC chairman, who later granted access to the party for the inspection of the materials.
The LP and PDP had both rejected the results of the presidential election, in which candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, was declared president-elect by INEC.
The APC candidate had secured 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party, who polled 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes respectively.
The meeting and inspection of the February 25 presidential election materials were still ongoing at the time of filing in this report at the INEC office in Abuja.
Yakubu, while speaking with the LP legal team, headed by Levy Uzoukwu (SAN), stated that INEC had received a letter, dated March 6, which stated that the team will meet the INEC team by 7 am on Monday.
According to him, “We were served notice that the team will be here on the seven at nine in the morning to inspect the materials but most specifically, the letter requested us to get in touch with our resident electoral commissioners (RECs) across the 37 states of the federation to make the documents and information available for the prosecution of their petition”
The INEC chairman said that the commission has scheduled a meeting with all RECs, virtual meeting at 3pm, on Monday to discuss among other issues, the request for Certified True Copy (CTCs), of the materials, not only to the Labour Party, but to all other litigants as well.
“I want to assure you that the commission will not hide any document from anybody and will make available any document that they have requested.
“There are two categories of documents, those that are in possession of the headquarters of INEC, we will easily make these documents available to you.
“Specifically the EC8Ds from the states and the ECD A, which is the coalition at the national collection centre by the commission itself.
“The EC8E, the declaration, so many, a total of, I think 39 documents, this we can easily certify and give you almost immediately.
Yakubu while stating that INEC has nothing to hide, assured that “Whatever you’re asking for will be made available to you.
“Now the meeting will be between our technical people and you will just work things out. So, whatever we need to facilitate as a commission so that you get this document that you require as a matter of urgency, I want to assure you that you will get them as a matter of urgency. So thank you so much. Let me reassure you again, whatever you require for the prosecution, we will make available. We will work out modalities for inspection of materials at the state level
“As for other documents that you are asking for, they are at 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 certification of documents, but also the inspection that you requested for each of these documents.
“The other one is accreditation data from the back end. This will also be made available to you. Remember that the accreditation data cover over 176,000 polling units. We have to print them physically, certify them, and give them to you. 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 Commissioner of your intended visit so that these documents will be made available to you those that are at the level, including access to 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.
Livy Uzoukwu, lead counsel, speaking with journalists after the meeting, described election petition as “time sensitive”
“We have 21 days to file a petition on behalf of our clients. Out of that 21 days, we probably have about 10 days to go and up till now we have not received any documents.
“We have written to INEC requesting for documents. Apart from that, the Court of Appeal made an order on March 3, to INEC to release those documents to us but we haven’t received any hence we requested for a meeting with the chairman of the commission.
“He graciously granted that audience within a very short notice, and he has given us assurance, concrete assurance on record that all documents we require will be made available and if possible, some of them will be made available to us today.
“So we believe that that will happen and we are leaving here rest assured that by the time we leave INEC premises at least we will leave with some documents, the rest can then come from tomorrow and so on and so forth.
“We are very much bothered and I made that point when we met with the chairman that not only are our clients bothered and agitated but also we members of the legal team are bothered, members of the Labour Party are bothered, their supporters are bothered and restive.
“In fact, it has taken a lot to calm them down to exercise patience that we are going to get the documents because the court of the land has ordered the documents to be given to us.
“Well, some documents will come from the state level but we do not think it will take eternity for those documents to come. Meanwhile, there are those that are domiciled here at the headquarters. Those ones we can go away with today.
Responding to question on what happens if INEC reneged, he said: “It will be a national calamity”
“Why do I say that? Not making the documents available will create the impression that INEC is deliberately frustrating us. That’s just the impression it will create to make sure that we cannot prosecute this petition. But listening to the chairman a short while ago and all assurances, I want to give him or we want to give him the benefit of the doubt that we will get some of them today.
“At least, if we get some of them today (Monday), that is indicative that we’ll get some other documents from tomorrow (Tuesday), next tomorrow (Wednesday) to enable us to file this petition. Having said that, the way and manner the chairman spoke, I’m confident that he will keep to his words.
Tanko Yunusa, ObiDatti chief spokesman, said the party will “not fail to mobilise our members to come out to march on the streets and INEC offices nationwide”
“Graciously, the chairman of INEC having read that particular statement has granted this opportunity to come into his office and liaise with him and he has assured the team of lawyers that they are going to present these documents.
“So, we want to wait and see the responses of our legal team. It is the legal team that will give us the marching order. When they are satisfied with what they’ve received from INEC, so that our members nationwide and worldwide will be satisfied that we are doing our job and they are ready to prosecute this case accordingly.”
