The Court of Appeal in Abuja has granted the request of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) it used for conducting the presidential election on February 25.
In the ruling delivered on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the court of appeal led by Joseph Ikyegh, held that reconfiguring the BVAS would constrain it from conducting the March 11 governorship and State house of assembly elections.
In an application, Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), had sought an order of the court “restraining the 1st respondent (INEC) from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until due inspection is conducted and certified true copies (CTC) of them issued”.
The court dismissed the objections by LP and Obi against the request. It said that allowing the objections would amount to tying the hands of INEC.
The court held that the backup files on the server cannot be lost and that restraining INEC will affect the forthcoming elections.
It noted that INEC had in an affidavit filed before the court, assured that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS could not be tampered with or lost.
The court, however 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 CTC of result of the physical inspection of the BVAS.
