Victor EzejaAbuja Court of Appeal has granted permission to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the governorship and State House of Assembly elections.
Peter Obi of Labour Party had requested the court to restrain INEC from reconfiguring the BVAS equipment used for the conduct of the February 25 Presidential election.
The court had last week granted Obi, who is the presidential candidate of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), permission to inspect materials used in the election to enable them to prepare their petition as they are challenging the victory of Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
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INEC subsequently brought an application before the court seeking permission to reconfigure BIVAS system in preparation for the March 11 governorship and State Assemblies elections.
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At the ruling on Wednesday, a three-man panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh granted INEC’s request to reconfigure the BVAS machines for the upcoming election on the ground that the information on them will be uploaded into the back-end server which cannot be tampered with.
The panel argued that granting Obi’s request would affect the electoral umpire in the conduct of the upcoming elections.
The appeal court, however, mandated INEC to allow the applicants to inspect and carry out a digital forensic examination of the electoral materials used to conduct the polls and also avail them of the certified true copy of the result of the physical inspection of the BVAS.
The court also granted the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Bola Tinubu’s request to inspect election materials for the February 25th exercise.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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