THE Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal fixed today, Wednesday March 8,2023, to rule on the prayers by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) asking for a review of an earlier order by the court permitting Peter Obi to inspect electoral materials used for the conduct of the presidential election.
The Appeal Court had granted Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) to inspect the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines as well as other sensitive materials deployed by INEC to conduct the presidential election on February 25, 2023.
In giving the order, the court restrained the electoral umpire from tampering with the BVAS machines or any materials used during the election.
INEC however approached the court shortly after the order praying for a review of the earlier order, explaining that it needed to ‘reconfigure’ the BVAS machines and redeploy them for the March 11, 2023 governorship and state assembly elections.
At the resumption of proceedings in the suit on Tuesday, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal led by Joseph Ikyegh slated Wednesday, March 8 for ruling after taking arguments from lawyers to INEC and Mr Obi.
In his submission before the court, INEC lawyer, Tanimu Inuwa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), urged the court to review the earlier order to enable INEC to reconfigure the BVAS machines for deployment to polling units across Nigeria.
“No data or information will be lost in the course of transferring data from the BVAS to the backend server or cloud (of INEC),” Inuwa explained, arguing that any delay in granting the application would affect the conduct of the governorship and state assembly polls.
But Obi’s lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), disagreed with INEC, contending that reconfiguring the BVAS would alter the data that had been stored on it from the presidential election and National Assembly election. He begged the court to dismiss INEC’s application.
Meanwhile, the Appeal Court also fixed Wednesday for hearing in a similar application filed by INEC concerning Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Atiku also secured the court’s permission to inspect the electoral materials that were used for the polls. The separate suit could not be heard on Tuesday because Atiku’s lawyer, Emeka Etiaba (SAN), needed time to respond to INEC’s filing.
