Court to rule Wednesday on Obi, INEC’s BVAS case

The Independent National Electoral Commission requested permission to modify the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, which was used for the recently ended presidential election. The Court of Appeal, Abuja has set Wednesday as the day for considering the application’s merit.

Judge Joseph High postponed making a decision on the subject until Wednesday after the parties were heard by the court’s three-person panel.

The goal of the application, according to Obi and LP’s legal team, led by Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, was to allow them to extract data from the BVAS that “reflect the actual results from Polling Units.”

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They both applied for the Certified True Copy of every piece of information in the BVAS.
“My lords, the purpose of this is to protect the evidence before INEC reconfigures the BVAS. This is so that the case’s content won’t be affected if they are eliminated,” Ikpeazu, SAN, remarked.

However, INEC urged the court to reject the application through a team of four Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN, led by Mr. Tanimu Inuwa.
Obi and LP’s proposal, according to INEC, will have an impact on its planning for the upcoming governorship and state assembly elections.

Some 176 000 BVAS were deployed to polling places during the presidential election, it informed the court.

“Each polling location has a unique BVAS machine that we must set up for the next elections.

“It will be quite challenging for us to reconfigure the 176, 000 BVAS within the time.

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“We will transfer all of the data in the BVAS to our backend server, as we have already mentioned in our affidavit, so no information in the BVAS will be lost.

“The BVAS must be set up. Thus, allowing this application would slow down the process and possibly cause the polls to be delayed, urged INEC’s attorney, Inuwa, SAN.