Presidential Election: BVAS data remain intact – INEC tells court, parties

Tanimu Inuwa, the principal attorney for the Commission, provided this assurance on Tuesday at the Court of Appeal in Abuja.

INEC is contesting a request made by Peter Obi, the presidential candidate for the Labour Party, LP, about the BVAS used in the election.

Inuwa, who opposed the application, claimed it would cause the governorship and state house of assembly elections, planned for Saturday, to be postponed.

He  told the court that there were about 176, 000 BVAS machines that were deployed in polling units during the presidential election.

“Each polling unit has its own particular BVAS machine which we need to configure for the forthcoming elections. It will be very difficult for us, within the period, to reconfigure the 176,000 BVAS.

“We have already stated in our affidavit that no information in the BVAS will be lost as we will transfer all the data in the BVAS to our backend server.

“We need the BVAS  configured. So, granting this application will be a clog in the process and may delay the conduct of the elections”, INEC’s lawyer, Inuwa, SAN, pleaded.

After listening to the parties, Justice Joseph Ikyegh adjourned ruling on the matter till Wednesday.

The court issued the restraining order in the ruling it gave on Friday granting permission to the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar and Obi to inspect the sensitive materials used for the conduct of the February 25 election.

Both Atiku and Obi obtained the order to challenge the outcome of the election which they alleged was marred by fraud and other irregularities.

INEC on March 1 declared the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Tinubu as the winner of the election but the PDP and the LP candidates are contesting the outcome.

They subsequently filed separate ex parte applications, praying to be granted access to inspect sensitive materials that INEC used for the conduct of the presidential poll.

But INEC, in a motion on the notice filed on March 4, asked the court to vary the order restraining it from tampering with materials used for the election.

The commission said it needed to reconfigure the BVAS for the next round of elections which would be held on Saturday.

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