In a recent ruling, the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja gave the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the go-ahead to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) used for the presidential election.
The court, comprising of a three-member panel of justices, held that INEC’s reconfiguration of the BVAS was necessary for the upcoming Governorship and State Assembly elections.
The Labour Party (LP) and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, had earlier raised objections against INEC’s move to reconfigure all the BVAS.
However, the court dismissed their objections, noting that stopping INEC from reconfiguring the BVAS would negatively impact the impending Governorship and State Assembly elections. The court also noted that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS could not be tampered with or lost, as it would be stored and easily retrieved from INEC’s accredited back-end server.
The court ordered INEC to allow Obi and his party to inspect and carry out digital forensic examination of all the electoral materials used in the conduct of the elections. Additionally, INEC was to provide them with a Certified True Copy (CTC) of the result of the physical inspection of the BVAS.
However, the court faulted Obi and LP for repeating their request to be allowed to scan and make copies of the electoral materials in INEC’s possession. The panel held that repeating the prayer amounted to an abuse of court process.
It will be recalled that Obi and his party had earlier sought permission to be allowed to conduct physical inspection of all the BVAS that were used for the presidential poll.
The Applicants, through their team of lawyers led by Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, said the essence of the application was to enable them to extract data embedded in the BVAS, which represents the actual results from Polling Units. They specifically applied for leave to carry out digital forensic and physical inspection of BVAS, etc., as well as to obtain the CTC of all the data in the BVAS.
INEC had earlier insisted that granting the request would affect its preparations for the impending Governorship and National Assembly elections. INEC stated that there were a total of 176,000 BVAS that were deployed to polling units during the presidential election. Each polling unit has its own particular BVAS machine which needs to be configured for the forthcoming elections.
It would be very difficult for INEC to reconfigure the 176,000 BVAS within the period given. INEC had assured the court that no information in the BVAS would be lost as it would transfer all the data in the BVAS to its back-end server. Therefore, granting Obi and LP’s request would be a clog in the process and could delay the conduct of the elections.
The court’s decision has been received with mixed reactions from various quarters. Some political analysts believe that the ruling is a step in the right direction, as it would enable INEC to conduct the upcoming Governorship and State Assembly elections without hitches.
Others, however, argue that the ruling has denied Obi and his party the opportunity to prove their case in court. They insist that Obi and LP’s request to scan and make copies of the electoral materials in INEC’s possession was necessary to prove their allegations of irregularities during the presidential election.
