BREAKING: Court Grants INEC Permission To Reconfigure BVAS For Governorship Elections

The Presidential Election Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja, has allowed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices for the purpose of conducting the governorship election.

Recall Peter Obi’s lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu SAN, had sought an order allowing his counsel to carry out digital, forensic, and physical inspection of the BVAS devices to prove that the just concluded presidential poll was rigged.

He also urged the court not to allow INEC to reconfigure the information in the BVAS as doing so may tamper with polling unit results.

But INEC’s lawyer, T. Inuwa SAN, disagreed and urged the court to dismiss the application, arguing that granting the application will cause serious delay in conducting the forthcoming governorship elections.

Inuwa maintained that INEC needed the BVAS devices to conduct the governorship and state assembly polls, adding that results of the presidential election will be stored on INEC’s back end server.

Ruling on INEC’s the motion, the 3-man panel of the court led by Justice I. Joseph held that although the Electoral Act 2022 gives the court powers to order inspection of electoral materials, Obi’s prayers seeking inspection of inspection of Electoral materials is repetitive because it had earlier granted his request.

It added that a fresh motion with the same prayers constitutes abuse of process, hence the court struck it out.

The panel also aligned with INEC’s argument that reconfiguring data on BVAS and uploading it on its server will not wipe out voter information.

“Those disposition has not been controverted or challenged by the applicant,” the court said.

The panel held it cannot ” tie the hands of INEC from using the BVAS machine for the governorship election.”

But the court ordered INEC to avail Obi with certified true copies of all Electoral materials.