Court declines Obi’s request to stop INEC from reconfiguring BVAS

The court of appeal has refused to grant the prayer of Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), seeking to stop the reconfiguration of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS).

The appellate court refused to restrain the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from reconfiguring the BVAS ahead of the governorship and state assembly elections.

In the ruling delivered on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the court of appeal led by Joseph Ikyegh, held that restraining the electoral commission would impede INEC from conducting the March 11 elections.

In an application, Obi had sought an order of the court “restraining the 1st respondent (INEC) from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the due inspection is conducted and certified true copies (CTC) of them issued”.

INEC had said no data would be lost while configuring BVAS ahead of the elections.

Tanimu Inuwa, counsel to the INEC, spoke on Tuesday while moving an application seeking to vary the orders of the court which gave permission to Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to inspect all the sensitive materials used in the conduct of the presidential election held on February 25.

The court had granted two different ex parte applications brought by Obi, Abubakar, and their respective political parties.

At the court session on Tuesday, Obi, and LP, through their team of lawyers led by Onyechi Ikpeazu, 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”.

The electoral body 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.

In a motion on notice filed on March 4, the INEC’s lawyer said granting the orders would “cause a delay in the conduct of the forthcoming governorship election”.