On Sunday, the Obi-Datti Presidential Campaign Council reiterated that its supporters won’t back down on their planned nationwide demonstration unless the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) grants Labour Party’s lawyers access to materials from the contentious February 25 presidential election.
Controversies had followed the outcome of the presidential election. The All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat the Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party flag bearer, who got 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.
Dissatisfied with the result, Obi and Atiku approached the election tribunal to seek permission to inspect the electoral materials used during the poll.
A few days later, the Court of Appeal in Abuja acceded to their requests to inspect the electoral materials, but the commission failed to grant the warring parties access.
The development is coming four days after INEC secured a court injunction to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System machines ahead of the March 18 governorship and states Assembly elections.
However, the Obi campaign council’s chief spokesman, Yunusa Tanko, maintained that the mobilisation of their supporters to occupy INEC offices nationwide would not be halted.
Tanko accused INEC of disobeying the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal’s order to grant Obi and the party access to the certified true copies of materials used in the poll.
“We didn’t fix a date for the protest because we deliberately wanted to give INEC up till Monday to respond to us first.
“But when they (INEC) fail to do what they are supposed to do, our supporters will hit the streets, by the grace of God. There is no going back,” he said.
When contacted about whether INEC would accede to Obi’s legal team’s request, the Chief Press Secretary, Rotimi Oyekanmi, declined to comment.
Similarly, the Force’s Public Relations Officer, Muyiwa Adejobi, said he was unaware if the LP had written to the police about this.
He, however, promised to get back to our correspondent.
As of the time of filing this story, the police spokesman had not given feedback on their reaction to the planned protest.
