INEC seeks Appeal Court’s permission to reconfigure BVAS

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has asked the Court of Appeal in Abuja to vary its orders retraining it from tampering with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used for the conduct of the 25 February election.

The court had issued the orders in the ruling it gave on Friday granting permission to Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to inspect the sensitive materials used for the conduct of the election.

Atiku, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Mr Obi, his Labour Party (LP) rival in the keenly contested election, had obtained the order in preparation to challenge the outcome of the election.

According to the results declared by INEC on 1 March, Mr Tinubu polled 8.8 million votes to defeat both Atiku and Mr Obi in the contest.

But the duo, who lost to the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s presidential candidate and president-elect, Bola Tinubu, has alleged malpractices during the polls.

They subsequently filed separate ex parte applications, praying to be granted access to inspect sensitive materials that INEC used for the conduct of the presidential poll.

The appellate court granted Atiku’s and Mr Obi’s requests to inspect the electoral materials including the BVAS machines amongst others last Friday.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that the Court of Appeal acts as the Presidential Election Petition Court where the outcomes of presidential elections are challenged by aggrieved candidates.

But our reporter has confirmed at the court’s registry that the electoral umpire applied for a variation of its order of 3 March.

The application seeks an order from the court to allow it to reconfigure its BVAS machines for the 11 March governorship and state parliamentary elections.

The electoral umpire explained that it needed to reconfigure the BVAS machines that were used for the 25 February polls for the 11 March elections and deploy them to polling units for Saturday’s election.

BVAS won’t be reconfigured in Abuja

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported on Monday that INEC would apply for a variation of its orders.

NAN quoted a credible source in the commission as saying that INEC would require sufficient time to reconfigure the BVAS needed to conduct the election that would take place in all the 36 states of the federation, except the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

“The commission’s Legal Department is actually preparing an application to be filled in the court on Monday to seek an order for it to reconfigure its BVAS for Saturday Governorship and State Houses of Assembly election,” the source said.

The source explained that considering the number of BVAS required to conduct the election across states, INEC needed to reconfigure the BVAS used for the 25 February elections and deploy them to polling units for the Saturday election.

The source added that INEC’s technical team had to be deployed on time to commence the re-configuration of the device which they said would be done one by one.

The source said the order was important if the Saturday’s governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections must hold as scheduled, otherwise, a postponement would become inevitable.

NAN recalls that the Court of Appeal in Abuja on Friday granted leave to the presidential candidates of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and his PDP counterpart, Atiku Abubakar, to have access to all the sensitive materials used by INEC for the conduct of the 25 February presidential election.

A panel of the appellate court led by Joseph Ikyegh made the order after it heard two separate ex parte applications the two aggrieved presidential candidates filed alongside their political parties.

Specifically, the applicants urged the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents it used for the presidential election to aid their petitions against the outcome of the presidential election.

“An order granting the applicants’ permission to do electronic scanning and make photocopies of voter’s registration, ballot papers used in the conduct of the election for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria held on the Feb. 25.

“An order granting leave to the applicants to carry out Digital Forensic Inspection of BVAS machines used for the conduct of the Feb. 25 election for the Office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

The plaintiffs also sought an order restraining INEC “from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the due inspection was conducted and Certified True Copies of them issued”.

The court in its consideration ordered INEC to allow the applicants to inspect all the electoral materials used in the conduct of the presidential election.

The court permitted the appellants to do electronic scanning and/or make photocopies of Voter Registration, Ballot Papers used in the conduct of the presidential election.

“That leave is hereby granted to the applicants to carry out Digital Forensic Inspection of BVAS machines used for the conduct of the 25 February 2023 election for the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” the court ordered.

(NAN)