Nigeria poll body allows parties to access voter materials

Nigeria’s election commission has promised to hand over immediately to the opposition all material linked to last month’s disputed presidential poll.

The chairman of the commission, Mahmood Yakubu, said it had nothing to hide.

The opposition Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) want access to the election data in order to back up a legal challenge to the result.

They have just over a week to file their case.

Labour had threatened nationwide protests if the election commission prevented access to the information.

According to the official results, the presidential poll was won by the governing party candidate, Bola Tinubu.

His challengers, Labour party’s Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of PDP, subsequently secured a court order granting them access to inspect the electoral materials.

These include data contained in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines, the electronic devices that have been in the centre of the dispute.