The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been given permission by the Court of Appeal in Abuja to modify the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the gubernatorial and state house of assembly elections.
The Labour Party (LP) and Peter Obi, the party’s presidential candidate, requested a court injunction prohibiting INEC, the first respondent, from altering the data stored in the BVAS machines until the proper inspection has been carried out and certified true copies (CTC) of them have been issued.
Nevertheless, a three-member panel of the court of appeal headed by Justice Joseph Ikyegh accepted INEC’s plea to reconfigure the BVAS machines for this week’s polls on Wednesday on the grounds that the data on them will be uploaded into the back-end system, which cannot be tampered with.
The appeals court ordered INEC to provide the applicants with a certified true copy of the outcome of the physical inspection of the BVAS as well as to permit them to inspect and undertake a digital forensic analysis of the electoral materials used to conduct the elections.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Bola Tinubu’s plea to view the electoral materials for the February 25th contest was also approved by the court.