Peter Obi and his party have refused to pay N1.5m to access documents requested — INEC tells Tribunal

The Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) has explained why the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, haven’t been granted access to the documents they are requesting.

Speaking at the presidential election petitions court on Wednesday, May 17, INEC’s counsel, Abubakar Mahmoud, said Obi and LP refused to pay the N1.5million demanded to access the requested documents.

Levy Uzoukwu, counsel to the party and its candidate, had accused the commission of refusing to release necessary documents requested by them to present as evidence in the suit challenging the outcome of the presidential election.

Uzoukwu told the five-member panel of the court led by Haruna Tsammani, that INEC “stubbornly refused to produce 70 percent of the electoral documents that were requested”.

Specifically, Uzoukwu said electoral documents concerning the polls in Rivers and Sokoto states have been inaccessible. For Sokoto state, Uzoukwu said the INEC officials demanded N1.5 million fee to process the documents.

“A typical example is that of Rivers state, where the resident electoral commissioner boldly told us they do not have any form EC8A to give us,” the senior advocate said.

Responding to the allegation, INEC’s lawyer said: “We agreed to meet on Monday and Tuesday (15 and 16 May). But on Monday, May 15, I received a call that the Labour Party legal team had not turned up at the venue for the inspection of the documents.

LP was given some electoral documents in Rivers, but they insisted on collecting all the documents that were required. The commission has not refused to produce any document.”