JUST IN: Court Set Date to rule on Obi, INEC’s BVAS case

The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) is expected to rule on Wednesday a motion brought by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to modify the orders allowing Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, candidates for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), to examine materials used in the 2023 presidential election.

After hearing arguments from parties about the motion by INEC, a three-member panel chaired by Judge Joseph Ikyegh decided on the date.

While Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), counsel for Peter Obi and the Labour Party (LP), and Ibrahim Inuwa (SAN), counsel for INEC, urged the court to deny the motion.

They equally applied to obtain the Certified True Copy of all the data in the BVAS.

INEC insisted that granting the request by Obi and LP would affect its preparations for the impending governorship and state 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.