The presidential candidate of the Labour party, Peter Obi, has urged the Presidential Election Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja, not to allow the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to tamper with election materials, saying its evidence will be tampered with.
Obi’s lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu SAN, sought an order allowing his counsel to carry out digital, forensic and physical inspection of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices to prove that the just concluded poll was rigged.
He argued before the court that the information in the BVAS represents the real polling unit results and he also needs a certified true of copy of elections results for verification purposes.
He said his prayers should be granted “to ensure that the evidence is preserved and not tampered with”, arguing that “the information on the INEC back end server can be changed.”
But INEC’s lawyer, T. Inuwa SAN, urged the court to dismiss the application.
He argued that “Granting the application will cause us a serious delay in conducting the forthcoming elections.”
“There are about 176,000 polling units across the nation and which we need to reconfigure each BVAS devices.
“No information will be lost by reason of transferring BVAS to our backend server,” Inuwa maintained.
After hearing their arguments, the court fixed Wednesday for ruling.
In another suit before the court, Emeka Etiaba SAN , lawyer to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, urged the tribunal to allow him to inspect INEC materials.
But INEC protested against it like it did in Peter Obi’s case.
Etiaba insisted that the court should not grant INEC’s request until the PDP’s technologist proves before the court whether data on the BVAS can be removed.
The court led by Justice J. S. Ikyegh adjourned the case till Wednesday
