The Independent National Electoral Commission has come out to say that the information contained in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the presidential election of February 25 are intact.
Now, the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has filed an application on BVAS deployed in the presidential poll. The electoral commission appeared at the Supreme Court of Appeal on Tuesday. The lead counsel, Tanimu Inuwa, of INEC, while opposing the application, argued that it would affect the conduct of the Governorship and State House of Assembly elections slated to hold on Saturday, March 11.
Equally important is that Obi’s lead counsel, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, reiterated that the application filed was to enable the legal team to have access to the data in the BVAS. This data represents the actual results of the polling units. What’s more, Obi’s lawyers also filed an application to collect the certified results of all the data in the BVAS. Ikpeazu added that this move is to preserve the evidence in the BVAS before they are reconfigured. This is because if the evidence isn’t gathered, the substance of the case might be affected.
INEC’s team of lawyers, led by Inuwa, urged the court to refuse the application. In addition, they stated that granting Obi’s request would affect the election
INEC’s Explanation
First, each polling unit has its own BVAS, which will need to be configured before the upcoming election. INEC says that it will be difficult to configure them if they provide the BVAS to the court.
INEC is promising that no information will be lost as they will backup all the data in the BVAS to the backend server.
The ruling has been adjourned until Wednesday by Justice Joseph Ikyegh.