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

The court of appeal has refused to restrain the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from reconfiguring the bimodal voter accreditation system (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 constrain INEC from conducting the March 11 elections.

In an application, Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), 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”.

The Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Wednesday, granted INEC permission to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used for the 25 February presidential and National Assembly elections across the country.

A three-member panel of the appellate court led by Joseph Ikyegh granted permission to the electoral body to reconfigure the machines ahead of Saturday’s governorship and Houses of Assembly elections across the 36 states of the federation.

The panel, however, ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload the data on the BVAS machines to the back-end server and make certified true copies of the data to the respondents.

The court had earlier granted an order permitting the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Abubakar Atiku, and his Labour Party rival, Peter Obi, to inspect the BVAS machines and other sensitive electoral materials.

The opposition candidates who came second and third behind the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), had requested access to the electoral materials preparatory to filing their petitions to challenge the outcomes of the 25 presidential elections in court.

Apart from granting them access to the materials, the court had, in its ruling delivered on 3 March, also restrained INEC from tampering with the BVAS machines pending the inspection to be conducted by the candidates.

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