The Court of Appeal in Abuja has granted INEC’s request to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) it used for the presidential election.
In a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of justices, on Wednesday, March 8, the court held that restraining the electoral commission would constrain INEC from conducting the March 11 elections.
It dismissed objections by the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, against the request.
According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party, would amount to “tying the hands of the Respondent, INEC”. It further stated that neither Obi nor LP filed a counter affidavit to challenge the argument in INEC’s affidavit.
Furthermore, it noted that INEC had in an affidavit it filed before the court, assured that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS could not be tampered with or lost, as they would be stored and easily retrieved from its accredited back-end server.
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 Certified True Copy, of result of the physical inspection of the BVAS.
