The
court, in a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of Justices,
held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring the BVAS would
adversely affect the impending Governorship and State Assembly
elections.
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has been given
the go-ahead by the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting
at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Wednesday, to reconfigure the
Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, which it used for the February
25th presidential polls.
The court, in a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of Justices,
held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring the BVAS would
adversely affect the impending Governorship and State Assembly
elections.
It dismissed objections that the Labour Party, LP, and its presidential
candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, raised against INEC’s move to reconfigure all
the BVAS.
According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party, would amount to “tying the hands of the Respondent, INEC”.
Besides, it noted that INEC had in an affidavit it filed before the
court, assured that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS could
not be tampered with or lost, as they would be stored and easily
retrieved from its accredited back-end server.
It further observed that neither Obi nor LP controverted the depositions
in INEC’s affidavit, stressing that since such averments were not
challenged, it amounted to admission by the Applicants.
Nevertheless, the court ordered INEC to allow the Applicants to inspect
and carry out digital forensic examination of all the electoral
materials used in the conduct of the elections, as well as to avail them
the Certified True Copy, of result of the physical inspection of the
BVAS.
The Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led panel faulted Obi and LP for repeating
their request to be allowed to scan and make copies of the electoral
materials in INEC’s possession.
Noting that the request was earlier granted, the panel held that repeating the prayer amounted to an abuse of court process.
It will be recalled that INEC had insisted that the reconfiguration of
the BVAS was necessary since they would be deployed for the next round
of elections.
It maintained that without a prompt variation of the order the court
earlier granted to Obi and the presidential candidate of the Peoples
Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, especially the aspect restraining
it from tampering with formation contained in the BVAS, it would be
difficult for it to proceed with the scheduled elections.
Obi and his party had in their application marked: CA/PEC/09m/23, sought
permission to be allowed to conduct physical inspection of all the BVAS
that were used for the presidential poll.
The Applicants, through their team of lawyers led by Dr. Onyechi
Ikpeazu, SAN, 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”.
They specifically applied for; “leave to carryout digital forensic and
physical inspection of BVAS, etc”, as well as to obtain the Certified
True Copy, CTC, of all the data in the BVAS.
“My lords, this is to ensure that the evidence is preserved before
the BVAS are reconfigured by INEC. This is because if they are wiped
out, it will affect the substance of our case”, Ikpeazu, SAN, added.
While opposing the application, INEC insisted that granting the request
would affect its preparations for the impending Governorship and
National Assembly elections.
It told the court that there were a total of 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
back-end 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 lead lawyer, Tanimu Inuwa, SAN, pleaded.
