The Courtroom of Attraction in Lagos has granted permission to the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee INEC to reconfigure the Bimordal Voters Accreditation BVAS for the Saturday, March 11 governorship and state home of meeting elections.
INEC had approached the court docket for permission to reconfigure the machines that had been used for the February 25, 2023 presidential and Nationwide Meeting elections as the identical machines are additionally for use through the governorship elections. This was nonetheless objected to by the Labour get together and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, who’s contesting the end result of the Presidential and Nationwide Meeting elections.
In an software marked: CA/PEC/09m/23, Obi and the Labour get together had sought permission from the court docket to be allowed to conduct a bodily inspection of all of the BVAS that had been used for the presidential ballot.
Obi and his get together stated the essence of the applying was to allow them to extract information embedded within the BVAS, “which characterize the precise outcomes from Polling Models.” They particularly utilized for; “go away to carryout digital forensic and bodily inspection of BVAS, and so forth”, in addition to to acquire the Licensed True Copy, CTC, of all the info within the BVAS.”
In a unanimous ruling by a three-member panel of justices this night March 8, the Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led panel held that stopping the electoral physique from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely have an effect on Saturday’s governorship and state assemblies elections. It dismissed objections that the Labour Social gathering, LP, and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, raised towards INEC’s transfer to reconfigure all of the BVAS.
In response to the court docket, permitting the objections by Obi and his get together, would quantity to “tying the fingers of the respondent, INEC.”
The court docket famous that an affidavit filed by INEC signifies that the accreditation information contained within the BVAS couldn’t be tampered with or misplaced, as they might be saved and simply retrieved from its accredited back-end server.
The court docket nonetheless ordered INEC to permit the candidates to examine and perform digital forensic examination of all of the electoral supplies used within the conduct of the elections, in addition to to avail them the Licensed True Copy, CTC, of results of the bodily inspection of the BVAS.
