The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has slated Wednesday to rule on the application of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) seeking permission to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), used during the just concluded presidential election.
A three-member panel of the appellate court adjourned to rule on the application after Labour Party (LP) and its candidate, Mr Peter Gregory Obi, filed a fresh application to be allowed to conduct a physical inspection of all the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) it used for the 2023 presidential election.
Labour Party/Peter Obi argued, through his lawyers, that allowing INEC to wipe out the data on the BVAS will affect the substance of his case against INEC’s alleged manipulation of the electoral systems and processes.
On its part, INEC argued that it will transfer all the data on the BVAS to its backend server.
INEC’s main argument is that they want to conduct another round of elections this Saturday.
Observers, however, have kicked against the idea as INEC has not given Peter Obi’s forensic team these devices to inspect before the planned transfer of data.
Also, the data transfer protocol is not clearly spelt out and much confidence is not retained in it.
Others regretted that nearly ten days after the elections, “INEC has not issued the audit report of the BVAS, yet they are in a haste to technically compromise the principal evidence of their fraudulent practices.”
An observer, who spoke to News Band on condition of anonymity, asked INEC to postpone the governorship elections by two or three weeks as it has done in the past and grant Peter Obi’s forensic team the access and time to conclude their inspection of the BVAS!
It was gathered that the three-man panel of Appeal Court judges that will determine the case is headed by Justice Joseph Ikyegh.
Obi and LP, through their team of lawyers led by Dr Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, said the essence of the application was to enable them to extract data embedded in the BVAS, “which represent the actual results from Polling Units”.
They equally applied to obtain the Certified True Copy, CTC, of all the data in the BVAS.
“My lords, this is to ensure that the evidence is preserved before the BVAS are reconfigured by INEC. This is because if they are wiped out, it will affect the substance of the case”, Ikpeazu, SAN, added.
However, INEC, through its team of lawyers comprising of four Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN, led by Mr Tanimu Inuwa, urged the court to refuse the application.
INEC insisted that granting the request by Obi and LP would affect its preparations for the impending Governorship and National Assembly elections.
It told the court that there are about 176, 000 BVAS that were deployed to polling units during the presidential election.
“Each polling unit has its own particular BVAS machine which we need to configure for the forthcoming elections.
“It will be very difficult for us, within the period, to reconfigure the 176, 000 BVAS.
“We have already stated in our affidavit that no information in the BVAS will be lost as we will transfer all the data in the BVAS to our backend server
“We need the BVAS configured. So, granting this application will be a clog in the process and may delay the conduct of the elections”, INEC’s lawyer, Inuwa, SAN, pleaded.
After it had listened to the parties, the Justice Ikyegh-led panel adjourned ruling on the matter till Wednesday.