Court permits INEC to reconfigure BVAS, litigants to inspect polls materials

The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has granted approval to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the governorship and state house of assembly elections.

The court also ordered the electoral body to allow the litigants protesting the outcome of the February 25 elections for national offices have unfettered access to the materials and devices used in the disputed elections.

The twin orders came in response to suspicions in camps of the Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that the INEC’s hurried request to reconfigure the BVAS might jeopardize evidences of alleged rigging in the February polls which have been condemned by all local regional and international observer missions monitoring the 2023 elections in the country.

Wednesday’s ruling was on the ground that the information on the BVAS machines will be uploaded into the back-end server which cannot be tampered with.

 Recall that in an application, the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate Peter Obi had sought an order from the court restraining INEC from tampering with the information in the BVAS machines until due inspection is conducted and certified true copies (CTC) of them issued.

Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)  on Friday, secured leave of the court to have access to all the sensitive materials used by the INEC in the conduct of the election held on February 25. However, INEC filed an application to vary the orders of the court.

Counsel to the INEC, Tanimu Inuwa  SAN, spoke on Tuesday while moving an application seeking to vary the orders of the court which gave permission to Obi and Atiku, to inspect all the sensitive materials used in the conduct of the presidential election held on February 25 said that  “Each polling unit has its own particular BVAS machine which we need to configure for the forthcoming elections.”

“It will be very difficult for us, within the period, to reconfigure the 176, 000 BVAS for the election.

“We have already stated in our affidavit that no information in the BVAS will be lost as we will transfer all the data in the BVAS to our backend server. Our backend server preserves the data.

“So, granting this application will be a clog in the process and disrupt the conduct of the elections.”

In his argument, counsel for Obi, Dr Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, opposed INEC’s application and urged the court not to grant it. He argued that granting INEC’s request would mean losing the original information there.

“All we are seeking is for a physical inspection of the BVAS so that the evidence is obtained before it will be configured,” he told the court.

In ruling on Obi and LP’s application, the court which also doubles as the presidential election petitions tribunal, said granting the sixth relief in the application would amount to “tying the hands of the respondent (INEC).”

In addressing concerns over the sanctity of data on the BVAS after they are reconfigured and used for Saturday’s elections, the court instructed INEC to give litigants requesting access to electoral materials full access to enable tem clear all doubts.

The court ordered that the applicants be allowed to inspect and perform forensic examination of all the electoral materials used in the conduct of the February elections, including the Certified True Copies of result and physical inspection of BVAS.