We’ve 10 days to file petition, make electoral materials available for inspection, LP’s legal team tells INEC
Following the refusal by the Independent National Electoral Commission to respect court injunction, the legal team of the Labour Party today stormed the electoral umpire in Abuja for inspection of electoral materials used for the February 25 presidential poll.
Dr Livy Uzoukwu, head of Labour Party legal team led over 60 lawyers into the meeting which was held at the commission’s national headquarters.
While speaking after the meeting, Dr Livy Uzoukwu said that the legal team informed Professor Yakubu Mahmood that their client (Mr Peter Obi) is bothered including his supporters over the inability of the electoral umpire to make electoral materials available for immediate inspection.
He said, “We are here because we have not received any electoral stocks for inspection on behalf of our clients, and as you all know, election petition is 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 a documents apart from that. The Court of Appeal made an order on the 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 that our clients are bothered and agitated but also we members of the legal council are bothered, members of 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.”