David Lawani, Abuja

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

The inspection came as the Chairman of INEC, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, said the commission has nothing to hide from the LP.

The head of the opposition party’s legal team, Dr Livy Uzoukwu, led 60 lawyers into the meeting, saying he would still brief journalists afterward.

At the meeting held at the commission’s national headquarters, the INEC chair assured the legal team that the commission would provide all the documents it requested, to prosecute its case.

Meanwhile, the presidential candidate of LP in the February 25 election, Mr Peter Obi, has revealed the focus of his petition at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT).

In a tweet yesterday, Obi said he wants to challenge both the electoral process of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the president-elect.

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“Following my response to a question while appearing on Arise TV earlier today, I want to state categorically that at the Presidential Elections Tribunal (PET), I am challenging the INEC electoral process that led to the declaration of Tinubu as president-elect as well as the Declaration itself,” Obi’s tweet read.

“Following my response to a question while appearing on Arise TV earlier today, I want to state categorically that at the Presidential Elections Tribunal(PET), I am challenging the INEC electoral process that led to the declaration of Tinubu as president-elect as well as he declaration itself,” Obi wrote.

*We have nothing to hide, Yakubu assures LP’s legal

Meanwhile, INEC has said it has nothing to hide from the LP and its team.

Speaking during the meeting, INEC chairman, Yakubu, said the commission would make available any document the party requests.

Yakubu told the legal team that materials at the commission’s headquarters would be provided.

He said a meeting would be held between states and the team to inspect materials in the custody of states’ offices of the commission across the country.

“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 have the headquarters of INEC, we will easily make these documents available to you,” he said.

“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.”