Why INEC wants court to vary order on inspection of election materials

INEC chair, Mahmood

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has asked the Court of Appeal to vary the ex parte order made in favour of Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), with regards to inspection of materials used for the presidential election.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the appellate court had on March 3, granted leave to Atiku Abubakar of the PPD and Mr Peter Obi of Labour Party to inspect election materials used by INEC to conduct the Feb. 25 presidential election.

The court granted the duo permission following two separate ex parte applications filed by Atiku and Obi, who came second and third respectively in the presidential election won by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

In the application filed by the commission and sighted by NAN, the commission is asking the court to vary the order to allow it to reconfigure its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the March 11 governorship and state houses of assembly elections.

NAN reports that it is the sole prayer in the application of the electoral umpire filed at the court.

No date has, however, been fixed for hearing of the application.

A credible source in the commission had told NAN that the application became necessary following an order restraining it from tampering with the information embedded in the BVAS machines until the due inspection was conducted and Certified True Copies of them were issued.

Speaking off camera, the source said that the commission would require sufficient time to reconfigure the BVAS needed to conduct the election that would take place in the 36 states of the federation excluding the FCT.

According to the source, considering the number of BVAS required to conduct the election across the states, INEC needs to reconfigure the BVAS used for the Feb. 25 elections and deploy them to polling units for the March 11 elections.

The source said that the technical team of the commission had to be deployed on time to start the reconfiguration of the devices, which had to be done one by one.

The source said the order was pertinent as not getting it could result to a postponement of the Saturday governorship and state houses of assembly elections.

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