The Presidential Election Petition Court sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Wednesday, granted the request of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) it used for the presidential election held on 25 February.
In a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of justices, the court held that preventing the commission from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect the governorship and state Assembly elections, which have been scheduled for Saturday.
It dismissed the objections of the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi to the request.
The Court also granted the President-elect, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu access to inspect electoral materials used by INEC during presidential election.
On Tuesday, Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), urged the Court of Appeal to order INEC to grant him access to sensitive materials it used for the presidential election.
Through his lawyer, Mr Akintola Makinde, Tinubu said that he would need to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials to enable him to prepare his defence against petitions that would seek to nullify his election.
While Tinubu’s first ex-parte application, which was filed on the same Tuesday, had the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Obi as respondents, in the second application, the Peoples Democratic Party, and its candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar were cited as respondents, alongside INEC.
“The materials will be relevant in helping us to prepare our defence and also make comparison with the information contained in INEC’s back-end server”, Makinde said.
But delivering judgment on Wednesday, a three-member panel of the court, in four rulings granted the reliefs sought by Tinubu and APC in the fourth motion ex-parte, except prayers five and six in the motion.
