The Appeal Court Permits INEC To Reconfigure The BVAS

The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has been given permission by the Court of Appeal in Lagos to modify the Bimordal Voters Accreditation System BVAS for the Saturday, March 11 gubernatorial and state house of assembly elections.

Since the same equipment will be used for the governorship elections as well as the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25, 2023, INEC had requested permission from the court to modify the voting devices. The Labour party, which is appealing the results of the presidential and national assembly elections, as well as its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, objected to this, though.

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In an application marked: CA/PEC/09m/23, Obi and the Labour party had sought permission from the court to be allowed to conduct a physical inspection of all the BVAS that were used for the presidential poll.

Obi and his party said the essence of the application was to enable them to extract data embedded in the BVAS, “which represent the actual results from Polling Units.” They specifically applied for; “leave to carryout digital forensic and physical inspection of BVAS, etc”, as well as to obtain the Certified True Copy, CTC, of all the data in the BVAS.”

In a unanimous ruling by a three-member panel of justices this evening March 8, the Justice Joseph Ikyegh-led panel held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect Saturday’s governorship and state assemblies elections. It dismissed objections that the Labour Party, LP, and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, raised against INEC’s move to reconfigure all the BVAS.

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According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party, would amount to “tying the hands of the respondent, INEC.”

The court noted that an affidavit filed by INEC indicates 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, CTC, of result of the physical inspection of the BVAS