The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said that the reset of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines must be done before Saturday’s governorship and House of Assembly elections can hold across the federation.
The electoral agency explained that it required adequate time to reconfigure the BVAS machines before the polls.
According to INEC, the order granted to Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate Atiku Abubakar, and his Labour Party (LP) counterpart, Peter Obi, to inspect the machines should be varied.
The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) sitting in Abuja is expected to rule today at 2pm on the LP’s legal battle with the electoral umpire.
It will also rule on the motions by the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), for leave to inspect materials used by the commission the recent presidential election.
The tribunal, during yesterday’s proceedings, also fixed ruling for the same time on the motions by INEC, the Labour Party (LP) and its candidate.
Tinubu’s lawyer, Akintola Makinde, while moving the two motions ex-parte, said they were to seek the court’s permission to inspect materials used for the election and obtain copies and other materials to prepare his case.
Lawyer to the APC, Omosanya Popoola, moved the two ex-parte motions filed for the party and in which it seeks similar prayers as contained in Tinubu’s motions.
Earlier, lawyer to INEC, Tanimu Inuwa (SAN), while arguing his client’s motion on notice, prayed the court to grant the prayers sought.
Inuwa said it was necessary that the order granted Obi and Atiku to inspect the BVAS be varied.
He said the commission should be allowed to store the date currently being held in the BVAS on INEC’s back end server to enable it deploy the same machines for the governorship and House of Assembly elections slated for March 11.
