The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja, has yielded to the prayers of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), ahead of Saturday’s governorship and State assembly elections.
The court, in a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of Justices, held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect the impending Governorship and State Assembly elections.
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Although, the court had earlier granted the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar and his counterpart in the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, the request to inspect election materials including the BVAS used in the February 25 presidential election.
Counsel for LP, Onyechi Ikpeazu, had said his team needs a physical inspection of the BVAS to enable them carry out a forensic inspection used for the poll.
While INEC had on March 4, asked the Court to vary the request, in his defence on Tuesday, Counsel to the Electoral Commission, Tanimu Inuwa, asked the court to dismiss the application for the inspection of BVAS on the ground that it will cause serious delay in the governorship election for March 11.
Inuwa said there are 176,000 polling units across the country and each have its own unique BVAS machine, which needs to be configured and it will be very difficult for them to configure such within a short period.
He assured that no data will be lost, as they have transferred the data to their backend server.
In a ruling on Wednesday, a three-member panel, led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, dismissed objections by the LP and its presidential candidate, Obi, raised against the INEC application to reconfigure all the BVAS.
According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party, would amount to “tying the hands of the Respondent, INEC.”
Besides, the court noted that INEC had in an affidavit it filed before it, assured that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS could not be tampered with or lost, as they would be stored and easily retrieved from its accredited back-end server.
It further observed that neither Obi nor LP controverted the depositions in INEC’s affidavit, stressing that since such averments were not challenged, it amounted to admission by the Applicants.
Attending the Court proceedings on Wednesday, were Peter Obi, the LP presidential candidate for the February 25 election.
He was accompanied to the Tribunal by the national chairman of the party, Julius Abure and Senator Victor Umeh, among other chieftains.
Counsels to Atiku and the PDP, Joe-Kyari Gadzama (SAN), Mike Ozekhome (SAN), Emeka Etiaba (SAN), amongst others, were also physically present in court.
Onyinyechi Ikpeazu (SAN) and Alex Ejesieme (SAN), appeared for Obi and the LP, while Omosanya Popoola and Akintola Makinde appeared for Tinubu and the APC.
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