JUST IN: Court Fixes Date To Rule On Peter Obi, INEC’s Case On BVAS

JUST IN: Court Fixes Date To Rule On Peter Obi, INEC’s Case On BVAS

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has scheduled a hearing on Wednesday to consider the merits of the application filed by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to be allowed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, used in the recently concluded presidential election.

On the same day that the Labour Party, LP, and its candidate, Mr Peter Obi, filed a fresh application to be allowed to conduct a physical inspection of all the BVAS used for the presidential election, a three-member panel of the appellate court adjourned to rule on the application.

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 also applied for a Certified True Copy (CTC) of all the data in the BVAS.

Read Also 2023 Presidential Election: Tinubu Seeks Court Order To ……

“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 a team of lawyers led by Mr Tanimu Inuwa and comprised of four Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN, urged the court to deny the application.

INEC insisted that granting Obi and LP’s request would jeopardize its preparations for the upcoming Governorship and National Assembly elections.

It informed the court that approximately 176, 000 BVAS were deployed to polling stations 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, Justice Joseph Ikyegh led the panel adjourned ruling on the matter till Wednesday.

For More News Join Our WhatsApp Group With This Link Below

https://chat.whatsapp.com/HlD7kmxUzAc2lwlP7yuXzk