The presidential candidates of both PDP and the Labour Party are trailing in the results of the election held on Saturday that INEC has announced so far.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) and its presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, his running mate, Kashim Shettima, have filed a suit to block any move aimed at stopping the collation and announcement of the presidential election.
The Cable reported that they sued the Labour Party (LP), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the Federal High Court in Kano.
The presidential candidates of both PDP and the Labour Party are trailing in the results of the election held on Saturday that INEC has announced so far.
The agents of the parties, on Monday, staged a walk-out from the venue of the National Collation Centre, Abuja, over the refusal of the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, to address their complaints about the validity of the results that came from Ekiti and Kwara states. The APC won both states.
On Tuesday, the two opposition parties and their vice presidential candidates, at a joint press conference, in Abuja, called for the stopping of the collation of the results of the election and resignation of the INEC chair.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had earlier endorsed Mr Obi as his preferred candidate, alleged fraud in the election and called for the cancellation of the results in places where the election had been conducted without compliance with the law.
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But in their suit suit marked FHC/KN/CS/43/2023, Mr Tinubu, his running mate, Mr Shettima, urged the court to restrain the defendants from stopping the collation.
The plaintiffs said in an affidavit filed in an application for an interim order that "neither the defendants nor any other person has the power to stop the process of announcing the result of the election as collated from various polling units".
They argued that "from the result at our situation rooms as collated in the states of the federation", Tinubu and Shettima "have met the requirements of the law to be declared the winner of the election and accordingly returned as the president and vice president-elect".
They said the opposition parties and Mr Obasanjo had put enormous pressure on INEC to stop the collation of results.
Therefore, they said there was an urgent need for the court to intervene and put a stop to those pressurising the electoral commission.
They prayed for an order of injunction "restraining the political parties, their privies, agents, associates, assigns, sympathisers, supporters, or any other person howsoever described under whatever guise howsoever spelt, under any guise whatsoever from taking any step or steps, whether judicial or extrajudicial, that is capable of preventing the INEC from completing the process of the conduct of the Presidential election held on February 25".
