The appellate court, which will sit as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, also ordered the electoral body to grant access to the election materials to the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
The orders were issued by an appellate court panel led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh after hearing two separate ex-parte applications filed by the two dissatisfied presidential candidates and their political parties.
INEC, the acclaimed winner of the presidential election, Bola Tinubu, and his party, the All Progressives Congress, were named as respondents in the case.
Both applications were based on Section 146 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, Section 47 (1, 2 & 3) of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act of 2022, and the Court's inherent jurisdiction as referenced by Section 6 (6) A & B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
While Obi, in his application, which was filed by his legal team led by Mr Alex Ejesieme, SAN, sought six principal reliefs, on the other hand, Atiku’s lawyer, Mr Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal.
Specifically, the applicants urged the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.
They maintained that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of the candidate of the APC, Tinubu.
Prime9jaOnline earlier reported that INEC had declared Tinubu of the APC as the winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election.
According to INEC, Tinubu scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku who polled a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Both PDP and LP had since rejected the outcome of the election and vowed to challenge it in court.