The Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Wednesday, gave the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the nod to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, it used for the presidential election.
The court, in a unanimous decision by a three-member panel of Justices, held that stopping the electoral body from reconfiguring the BVAS would adversely affect the impending Governorship and State Assembly elections.
It dismissed objections that the Labour Party, LP, and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, raised against INEC’s move to reconfigure all the BVAS.
According to the court, allowing the objections by Obi and his party, would amount to “tying the hands of the Respondent, INEC”.
Besides, it noted that INEC had in an affidavit it filed before the court, assured that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS could not be tampered with or lost, as they would be stored and easily retrieved from its accredited back-end server.
It further observed that neither Obi nor LP controverted the depositions in INEC’s affidavit, stressing that since such averments were not challenged, it amounted to admission by the Applicants.
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