At least twenty Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) have been engaged by the Labour Party (LP) to challenge the outcome of the February 25 presidential election on behalf of its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
Sources within the party that spoke with Punch, claimed that the lawyers drawn from different chambers were being furnished with materials that would be used as evidence in court.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) last Wednesday declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu winner of the election.
The National Secretary of the Labour Party, Umar Farouk speaking on their legal suit said some SANs expressed their interest in joining the legal battle to prove Obi’s case.
He said, “We have more than 20 SANs that are willing to participate and offer their services for the renewal and emergence of a new Nigeria. As I am talking to you, our lawyers are working on it.
“But this is not something we can discuss on the pages of a newspaper. All I can tell you is that we have started ‘trekking’ to the court.”
Farouk, when asked if the leadership of the party and the candidate had been able to garner concrete evidence other than the alleged isolated incidents the APC claimed the Labour Party was dangling to get public sympathy, said, “The court is not a polling box that they can smash and put in what they want.
“If the APC thinks they can pre-empt the court, let them do it. They had earlier pre-empted the election that they were going to win by hook or crook and they had claimed they won. Let’s wait and see. Unlike INEC, the judiciary is a different thing.
“We have seen how independent the commission is. But we need to also examine how independent the judiciary also is in a matter of this magnitude. Let’s see the solace it can offer the masses. Let’s see if the judiciary has also shattered the hope of Nigerians just as INEC did.”
Farouk, however, couldn’t give a definite date when the case would be filed.
He added, “We are saying Obi is the winner from the record we have before us. But INEC did something else. They hurriedly carried out the plan of their paymaster.
“Therefore we have every reason to claim victory if it is being denied.
“On the part of Atiku and the PDP, they have the right and data to claim that their mandate was stolen. The only arbiter now is the court.