COURT GRANTS INEC PERMISSION TO RECONFIGURE BVAS

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (Court of Appeal) on Wednesday, March 8 granted the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) permission to reconfigure its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the March 11 state elections.

The court granted the order on the basis that INEC said all data in BVAS machines would be transferred to a back end server before the reconfiguration.

The electoral umpire stated that during the transfer of the data to the backend, the data cannot be tampered with.

The Court of Appeal held that not granting INEC’s request would jeopardize the governorship and House of Assembly elections holding on Saturday, March 11, 2023.

A three-member panel of the appellate court, led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh, granted leave to the applicant for the purposes of configuring the BVAS for the election on Saturday.

The panel, however, asked INEC to upload data to back-end server and make true certified copy to the respondents.

The panel, however, asked INEC to upload data to back-end server and make true certified copy to the respondents.

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal also granted leave to President-elect Bola Tinubu to access sensitive materials used by INEC for the conduct of the 2023 presidential election.