The Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, have been accused by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of not paying the N1.5 million fee required to access the documents they are requesting for their election petition.
This was disclosed by Abubakar Mahmoud, the counsel for INEC, at the sitting of the presidential election petitions court on Wednesday.
Mahmoud was responding to the claims by Levy Uzoukwu, the counsel for LP, that INEC has refused to release necessary documents that they requested to present as evidence in their suit challenging the outcome of the 2023 presidential election.
Uzoukwu told the panel, led by Haruna Tsammani, that INEC “stubbornly refused to produce 70 percent of the electoral documents that were requested”.
He specifically noted that documents concerning the elections in Rivers and Sokoto states have been inaccessible.
For Sokoto State, Uzoukwu said the INEC officials demanded a N1.5 million fee to process the documents.
However, Mahmoud denied the allegation and said that Obi’s legal team declined to attend a meeting that was called to streamline issues around documents to be tendered before the court.
