The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been granted its request by the Court of Appeal in Abuja to allow it reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation (BVAS) machines used during the February 25, presidential and National Assembly elections.
The appellate court had upon two separate ex parte applications on March 3, granted leave to presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar and Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party to inspect the election materials used by INEC to conduct the February 25 presidential election.
INEC, not comfortable with the order, approached the court of Appeal on March 6, requesting it to vary the order to enable it to reconfigure the BVAS for the March 11, governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.
Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP) maintained that INEC should not be allowed to tamper with the BVAS and election materials.
According to Obi, the order for physical inspection of the BVAS machine would enable him to conduct a forensic investigation.
The counsel for Obi and the LP, Onyechi Ikpeazu noted that the party is seeking to obtain the certified true copies of the material as well as ensure the evidence is present before they are configured.
However, ruling on the INEC’s application on Wednesday, a 3-man panel of the Court of Appeal held that granting the objection by Obi, LP and Atiku, PDP would jeopardize the electoral body in the conduct of the March 11 governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections.
The Court agreed with INEC that information on accreditation contained in the BVAS devices had been uploaded into its back up server and could be accessed at any time.
The appellate court predicated its agreement with INEC on the ground that all averments in the counter affidavit of the Electoral body were not controverted by the respondents.
The Court contended that granting the request of Obi and Labour Party LP would tie down the hand of INEC in the conduct of next Saturday elections.
The panel noted that the claims of INEC that information on the BVAS devices cannot be tampered with during uploading or lost during the same purpose was not addressed by Obi and as such, deemed valid.
It would be recalled that the Labour Party and Peter Obi had urged the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division to dismiss the application by the INEC seeking to vary its earlier order granted the LP and PDP to access and conduct physical inspection of materials used for the 2023 presidential poll.
The electoral umpire through its counsel, Tanimu Enuwa SAN, informed the court of its motion on notice and a written address filed and dated 6th March as well as an affidavit and exhibits attached to substantiate their application.
When asked by the court on how they want the order varied, INEC noted that its affidavit demonstrated the effect the order will have on the coming election.
He said, “We will run into constitutional crises if you have the elections conducted outside the constitutional time.
The INEC lawyer submitted that they want the order to inspect election sensitive materials varied in accordance with Section 122 of the Electoral Act, 2022.
Also INEC maintained that the application became necessary following an order restraining it from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until due inspection was conducted and Certified True Copies of them were issued.
He said INEC would require sufficient time to reconfigure the BVAS needed to conduct the election that would take place in the 36 states of the federation excluding the FCT.
He said the number of BVAS required to conduct the election across the states, INEC needs to reconfigure the BVAS used for the Feb. 25 elections and deploy them to polling units for the March 11 elections.
The Commission noted that setting aside the ex-parte order was important, adding that not getting it could result in a postponement of Saturday’s governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.
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