The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had applied to the Appeal Court in Abuja to allow it reconfigure the Biomodal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS), which it used to conduct the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections
However the Court of Appeal, has fixed Wednesday to consider the merit of the application by INEC to reconfigure the BVAS.
The lead counsel of both the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi and the party, Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN told the court that the essence of their application was to enable them to extract the data embedded in the BVAS, “which represent the actual results from Polling Units.”
They equally applied to obtain the Certified True Copy of all the data in the BVAS.
“My lords, this is to ensure that the evidence is preserved before the BVAS are reconfigured by INEC. This is because if they are wiped out, it will affect the substance of the case,” Ikpeazu, SAN, added.
The counsel to the INEC led by Mr. Tanimu Inuwa, urged the court to refuse the application, insisting that granting the request by Obi and LP would affect its preparations for the impending governorship and state assembly elections.
It told the court that there are about 176, 000 BVAS that were deployed to polling units during the presidential election.
“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.
“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
“We need the BVAS configured. So, granting this application will be a clog in the process and may delay the conduct of the elections,” INEC’s lawyer, Inuwa, SAN, pleaded.
After the three-man panel of the court listened to both parties, Justice Joseph High adjourned to Wednesday for ruling.
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