Alex Enumah in Abuja
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has given permission to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) used for the conduct of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.
Justice Joseph Ikyegh gave the permission while delivering ruling in a motion on notice brought by the Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
Obi and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had in the motion argued on March 7, prayed the court amongst others to be permitted to carry out digital forensic inspection of the BVAS and another order restraining INEC from tampering with the BVAS machines used until they have completed inspection of the BVAS machines.
However, this request was opposed by INEC, which claimed that the said BVAS machines which the plaintiffs sought a restraining order are to be deployed for the governorship and state Houses of Assembly’s election slated for March 11.
INEC had submitted that in order to deploy the BVAS for the March 11 polls, it would require their reconfiguration, praying the court against granting of the order so as not to stall the March 11 elections.
Delivering ruling in the motion, the three-man panel of the appellate court pointed out that the request for forensic inspection of BVAS as well as Certified True Copies of election results from BVAS have been granted the plaintiffs in its ruling of March 3.
The panel however refused to restrain INEC from tampering with the BVAS machines, based on the forthcoming governorship and state Houses of Assembly’s election.
The decision was predicated on submissions of INEC that information in the BVAS to be reconfigured are stored in an accreditation back-end server, which cannot be tampered with, adding that the plaintiffs can always obtain date in the BVAS from the back-end server.
Details later…
