The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has slated Wednesday, March 8th, to rule on the application by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to be allowed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) it used for the presidential election.
A three-member panel led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh also adjourned to rule on the application filed by the Labour Party (LP), and its candidate, Mr Peter Obi, to be allowed to conduct a physical inspection of all the BVAS that were used for the poll.
Onyechi Ikpeazu, Counsel to Obi says the essence of the application was to enable them to extract data embedded in the BVAS, which represents the actual results from polling units, Channels News reports.
Ikpeazu, prayed the court to allow them to conduct a physical inspection of all the BVAS that were used for the presidential election, as this is to ensure that the evidence is preserved before the BVAS are reconfigured by INEC.
He added that if they are wiped out, it will affect the substance of the case.
They equally applied to obtain the certified true copy of all the data in the BVAS.
Counsel to INEC, Mr Tanimu Inuwa, urged the court to refuse the application, insisting that granting the request by Obi and the Labour Party (LP) would affect its preparations for the impending governorship and National Assembly elections.
It told the court that there are about 176, 000 BVAS that were deployed to polling units during the presidential election, and each polling unit has its own particular BVAS machine which they need to configure for the forthcoming elections. He says it will be very difficult to reconfigure the number, within the period.
He added that no information in the BVAS will be lost as they will transfer all the data in the BVAS to their backend server.
