INEC asks court to vary inspection order granted Atiku, Obi

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has asked the Court of Appeal to vary the ex parte order made in favour of the Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the inspection of materials used for the February 25, 2023, presidential election.

The Court of Appeal, on March 3, granted leave to the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, and Peter Obi of the Labour Party to inspect election materials used by INEC to conduct the February 25 presidential election.

The court granted the duo permission following two separate ex parte applications filed by Atiku and Obi who came second and third respectively in the presidential election won by Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In the application filed by the commission and sighted by NAN, the commission is asking the court to vary the order to allow it to reconfigure its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the March 11 governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.

It is the sole prayer in the application of the electoral umpire filed at the court.

No date has, however, been fixed for hearing of the application.

A credible source in the commission had told NAN that the application became necessary following an order restraining it from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the due inspection was conducted and Certified True Copies of them were issued.

The source said INEC would require sufficient time to reconfigure the BVAS needed to conduct the election that would take place in the 36 states of the federation excluding the FCT.

According to the source, considering the number of BVAS required to conduct the election across the states, INEC needs to reconfigure the BVAS used for the February 25 elections and deploy them to polling units for the March 11 elections.

The source stated that the technical team of the commission had to be deployed on time to start the reconfiguration of the devices, which had to be done one by one.

The source said the order was pertinent as not getting it could result in a postponement of Saturday’s governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections.

The Star

Segun Ojo