INEC Approaches Appeal Court To Stop Obi, Atiku From Inspecting BVAS Used For Presidential Election

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will on Monday approach the Court of Appeal, hoping to set aside an earlier ruling regarding the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and other sensitive materials used for the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections.

This was disclosed by a top INEC official at the weekend in Abuja.“The commission as a law-abiding institution would seek the Court’s leave concerning the BVAS, they have to be re-configured polling units by polling units for the next election.“We have to approach the court to grant us leave to do the re-configuration, as this cannot be done without the court order.

The re-configuration must be done on time as it would be done manually and would be deployed to the designated PUs,” the official said.Recall that there have been mixed reactions on the outcome of the elections, especially on the real time transmission of collated results from the BVAS to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (iReV).

The court had last week stopped the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC from tampering with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS deployed in last Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly Elections.

Obi in his application moved by his team of lawyers, led by Mr Alex Ejesieme, SAN, sought six principal reliefs, while Atiku’s lawyer, Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal.However, INEC is expected to deploy the same BVAS for the subnational elections, meaning that the commission will have to reconfigure them and make them fit for purpose.

Checks revealed that it takes an average of five days to configure the BVAS, meaning that the commission has to begin the process of reconfiguration latest by Tuesday.

A source in one of the state offices of the commission who did not want his name mentioned due to the sensitivity of the issue however said the commission would be approaching the courts to vacate the order.

He said: There are over 176,000 polling units. The BVAS is polling units specific, which means that you cannot do a mass reconfiguration.

The machines have to be reconfigured individually and those take an average of five days.“If we leave the BVAS as the court has ordered, it simply means that we cannot use them for the state elections. So, we are approaching the court to seek a way out”.