The Court of Appeal, Abuja has fixed Wednesday to consider the merit of the application the Independent National Electoral Commission filed to be allowed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, used for the just concluded presidential election.
After the three-man panel of the court had listened to the parties, Justice Joseph High adjourned ruling on the matter till Wednesday.
Obi and LP, through their team of lawyers led by 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 equally applied to obtain the Certified True Copy 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 the case,” Ikpeazu, SAN, added.
However, INEC, through its team of lawyers comprising four Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SAN led by Mr Tanimu Inuwa, urged the court to refuse the application.
INEC insisted that granting the request by Obi and LP would affect its preparations for the impending governorship and state assembly elections.
It told the court that there are about 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 backend 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 lawyer, Inuwa, SAN, pleaded.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has asked the Presidential Election Petition Court to vary the orders that were granted to the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, respectively, to inspect materials used for the last presidential election.
INEC, in a motion on notice filed on March 4, is praying the court to vary the order which restrained it from tampering with materials used for the election.
The commission said it needed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System for the next round of elections.
The appellate court had on March 3 granted leave to Atiku and Obi to inspect election materials used by INEC in the conduct of the February 25 presidential election.
A panel of the appellate court led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh granted the permission following two separate ex parte applications filed by Atiku and Obi, who came second and third respectively in the presidential election won by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress.
In the application filed by the commission and sighted by NAN, the commission is asking the court to vary the order to allow it to reconfigure its 176,846 BVAS for the March 11 governorship and state houses of assembly elections.
NAN reports that it is the sole prayer in the application of the electoral umpire filed at the court.
No date has however been fixed for hearing of the application.
According to a source, considering the number of BVAS required to conduct the election across the states, INEC needs to reconfigure the BVAS used for the February 25 elections and deploy them to polling units for the March 11 elections.
The source said that the technical team of the commission had to be deployed on time to start the reconfiguration of the devices, which had to be done one by one.
The official further said the order was pertinent as not getting it could result in the postponement of the Saturday governorship and state houses of assembly elections.
The source explained that the application became necessary following the order restraining INEC from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the due inspection was conducted and Certified True Copies of them were issued, noting that the commission would require sufficient time to reconfigure the BVAS needed to conduct the polls.
Meanwhile, the PDP has welcomed the application by INEC seeking leave of the court to reconfigure the BVAS.
The Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the PDP, Ibrahim Abdullahi, described the development as “A second litmus test of the INEC’s commitment to credible polls.”
But the All Progressives Congress on Monday night asked INEC to educate Nigerians on why it needed to reconfigure the BVAS ahead of Saturday’s election.
Speaking in an interview, the Chief Spokesman for the APC presidential campaign council, Festus Keyamo, disclosed that though INEC had been vested with the power to hold elections in the country, it still owed Nigerians an explanation on why the technological device should be reconfigured.
He said, “INEC has the statutory powers to do whatever it is they are doing. And if they have to work within those powers to ensure that the elections are free and fair, then there is no problem so long as they explain to the parties what they are doing to avoid giving room for suspicion.
‘The need to reconfigure those systems is also not clear enough to me. I think INEC needs to explain to the public very well why it needs to do that in a psychological sense because this is about technology.
“The commission has to explain to the members of the public. For us, we are not here to defend, support or criticise INEC. No, we won’t do that. This is because we as the ruling party also look forward to a free and fair process ahead of Saturday’s election and things have to be done legitimately.”
The National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Felix Morka, said Nigerians should not always be quick to raise suspicions over any demand that the commission might make.
“So, if INEC decides there is a technical note to reconfigure all their systems in order to conduct the next elections, I am quite sure that the course of approach in making the appropriate decision at the right time to authorise INEC to do what is necessary would be approved by the court.
“I don’t see where the cause for the alarm is. But I think the media can help us by going to INEC to clarify why they need to, technically speaking, reconfigure those BVAS,” he stated.
However, the Labour Party described INEC’s move on the BVAS reconfiguration as medicine after death.
Speaking with The Punch correspondent, Akin Oshuntokun, Director General of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council said the party had lost faith in the activities of the electoral commission.
He said, “Anything INEC does, it does on its own. We don’t know where this one is going to end. INEC is not a body anyone should be associated with. They are not worthy of the trust of Nigerians.”
Doubting the significance of the BVAS configuration on the elections, Oshuntokun added, “We don’t believe in this configuration thing. We are all used to the internet and computers. You can only flash your phone when it is absolutely necessary but you can’t wipe out information from the cloud.’’
Osuntokun further berated the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd) for doing little to match his promise of a legacy of credible elections before bowing out of office on May 29.
