Peter Obi’s lawyer reveals why tribunal should stop INEC from reconfiguring BVAS

The Labour party (LP) presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has urged the Presidential Election Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja, to stop the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from reconfiguring the BVAS.

Naija News reports that Peter Obi made this known through his lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu, stressing that INEC might tamper with its evidence in the BVAS.

Recall that INEC had requested the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) to alter the request by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), Atiku Abubakar, and Peter Obi, respectively, to inspect electoral materials for the conduct of the presidential election.

The commission in a motion on notice filed on March 4, is seeking the court to alter the order which restrained it from tampering with materials used for the election.

The commission said it needed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the next round of elections.

However, Peter Obi’s lawyer on Tuesday sought an order allowing his counsel to carry out a digital, forensic, and physical inspection of the BVAS to prove that the just concluded election was rigged.

He averred that the information in the BVAS represents the real polling unit results and he also needs a certified true copy of election results for verification purposes.

Onyechi Ikpeazu demanded that his prayers should be granted to ensure that the evidence is preserved and not tampered with adding that the information on the INEC backend server can be changed.

But INEC’s lawyer, T. Inuwa SAN, urged the court to dismiss the application because granting the application will cause a serious delay in conducting the forthcoming governorship and House of Assembly elections.

He added that no information will be lost by the reason of transferring BVAS data to the backend server of INEC.

He said: “There are about 176,000 polling units across the nation and which we need to reconfigure each BVAS devices.

“No information will be lost by reason of transferring BVAS to our backend server”

After hearing their arguments, the court fixed Wednesday for ruling.