The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has been given permission to modify the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, it utilized for the presidential election, by the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, which was in session at the Court of Appeal in Abuja on Wednesday.
A three-judge panel of the court ruled unanimously that preventing the electoral authority from redesigning the BVAS would have a negative impact on Saturday’s elections for governor and state parliament.
It disregarded the concerns the Labour Party, LP, and Mr. Peter Obi, the party’s presidential candidate, had about INEC’s decision to reorganize all of the BVAS.
The court stated that granting Obi and his party’s objections would “tie the respondent, INEC’s hands.”
Additionally, it mentioned that INEC had stated in an affidavit it submitted to the court that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS would be kept and easily retrievable from its authorized back-end server, guaranteeing that they could not be altered or destroyed.
It further pointed out that neither Obi nor LP had refuted the statements made in INEC’s affidavit, highlighting the fact that the applicants had effectively admitted the statements as they had not been refuted.
It further pointed out that neither Obi nor LP had refuted the statements made in INEC’s affidavit, highlighting the fact that the applicants had effectively admitted the statements as they had not been refuted.
However, the court directed INEC to provide the petitioners with the Certified True Copy, CTC, of the outcomes of the physical inspection of the BVAS, as well as to let them to inspect and undertake digital forensic examination of all electoral materials used in the conduct of the elections.
Obi and LP were criticized by the Judge Joseph Ikyegh-led panel for repeatedly requesting permission to scan and copy the electoral papers that INEC is in charge of.
Noting that the request was originally granted, the panel held that repeating the prayer amounted to an abuse of judicial procedure.
You may recall that INEC had demanded that the BVAS needed to be reconfigured because they will be used in the upcoming round of elections.
It argued that it would be difficult to carry out the scheduled elections without a prompt modification of the order the court previously granted to Obi and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, particularly the part prohibiting it from meddling with formation contained in the BVAS.
Obi and his party asked for permission to physically inspect all of the BVAS that were used for the presidential election in their application, which was stamped CA/PEC/09m/23.
With a group of attorneys lead by Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, the petitioners claimed that the main goal of the application was to allow them to access data that was encoded in the BVAS and “reflect the actual findings from Polling Units.”
They applied expressly for, “leave to carryout digital forensic and physical inspection of BVAS, etc”, as well as to obtain the Certified True Copy, CTC, of all the data in the BVAS.”