*As INEC promised not to tamper with back-end information used for the election
*Says order for forensic inspection of balloting materials and BVAS stays
The Court of Appeal in Abuja has approved the application by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in readiness for the March 11 Governorshipamd State Houses of Assembly election.
The court also rejected INEC’s prayers to vary the order it earlier gave to the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Mr. Peter Obi, on the BVAS inspection and forensic analysis of the electronic accreditation and polling unit results transmission technology.
A three-member panel of Justices led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, handed down the ruling Wednesday.
The panel said there was no need repeating its ruling allowing LP and Obi to access, inspect and certify sensitive materials used for the conduct of the presidential election.
According to the panel, “INEC’s submission that the accreditation data from the 176,000 BVAS used for the election would be uploaded and stored in the backend of the server, was not challenged or controverted by Obi and the LP and thus they were deemed admitted”.
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.
The panel also granted an application by the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President-elect, Bola Tinubu to access and inspect sensitive materials used for the election, to enable him and the party defend the petitions filed against them.
Aside granting the applicants order to inspect and carry out digital forensic examination of all the electoral materials used in the conduct of the elections, INEC was also ordered to avail them the Certified True Copy (CTC), of result of the physical inspection of the BVAS.
Noting that the request was earlier granted, the panel held that repeating the prayer amounted to an abuse of court process.
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 prompt variation of the order the court earlier granted to Obi and 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 with number: CA/PEC/09m/23, sought the permission of the court to be allowed to conduct physical inspection of all the BVAS used for the presidential poll.
LP and Obi, 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.”
While opposing the application, INEC told the court that there were a total of 176,000 BVAS that 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, not granting this application will be a cog in the process and may delay the conduct of the elections,” INEC’s lead lawyer, Tanimu Inuwa, SAN, stated.
