The Presidential Campaign Council of the Labour Party (LP) has vowed that supporters of its presidential candidate, Peter Obi will embark on a nationwide protest except for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) allow its lawyers access to the materials used for the February 25 election.
The Chief Spokesman for the Obi-Datti Campaign Council, Yunusa Tanko, insisted that there was no going back on the mobilisation of their supporters to occupy INEC offices nationwide.
Recall that both the LP and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) candidates rejected the outcome of the presidential election, in which President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was declared the winner of the contest.
Tinubu polled 8,794,726 votes to defeat the PDP candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and the Labour Party flag bearer, who got 6,984,520 and 6,101,533 votes, respectively.
Dissatisfied with the result, both Obi and Atiku approached the election tribunal to seek permission to inspect the electoral materials used during the poll, which was granted. However, the electoral umpire had failed to grant them access.
A few days later, the Court of Appeal in Abuja acceded to their requests for inspection of the electoral materials but the commission failed to grant the warring parties access.
The development is coming four days after INEC secured a court injunction to reconfigure the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines ahead of the March 18 governorship and states Assembly elections.
But Tanko who maintained that they won’t back down on their planned nationwide demonstration accused INEC of disobeying the order of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to grant Obi and the party access to the certified true copies of materials used in the conduct of the poll.
“We didn’t fix a date for the protest because we deliberately wanted to give INEC up till Monday to respond to us first.
“But when they (INEC) fail to do what they are supposed to do, our supporters will hit the streets, by the grace of God. There is no going back,” he said.
