The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has guaranteed that no information will be lost during the configuration of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) before to the gubernatorial and state assembly elections.
Tuesday, Tanimu Inuwa, counsel for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), spoke while submitting an application to vary the orders of the court that allowed Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), and Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to inspect all the sensitive materials used in the conduct of the February 25 presidential election.
The court had allowed Obi’s, Abubakar’s, and their respective political parties’ separate ex parte motions.
Obi, LP, and their team of attorneys lead by Onyechi Ikpeazu stated in court on Tuesday that the basis of their application was to enable them to retrieve data included in the BVAS, “which represent the actual results from polling units.”
Additionally, they requested the certified true copy (CTC) of all BVAS data.
“This is to ensure that the evidence is maintained prior to INEC reconfiguring the BVAS.” This is because if they are eliminated, it will affect the case’s content,” Ikpeazu explained.
The electoral commission warned that accepting Obi and LP’s request would interfere with its preparations for the forthcoming governorship and national assembly elections.
During the presidential election, approximately 176,00 BVAS were deployed to polling places, according to the judge.
In a move on notice filed on March 4, the INEC’s attorney stated that granting the orders will “delay the impending governorship election.”
“Each voting location has its own BVAS machine, which we must configure for the upcoming elections,” he explained.
“It will be extremely difficult for us to reconfigure 176,000 BVAS in time for the election.
“As indicated in our affidavit, we will transfer all BVAS data to our backend system, ensuring that no BVAS data will be lost. Our database server maintains the data.
“Accordingly, allowing this application will impede the process and interfere with the holding of the elections.”
