From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has urged the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) to vary the orders granted the candidates of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to inspect relevant materials used for the February 25 presidential election.
In its motion on notice dated March 4, the electoral body specifically urged the tribunal to vary the order barring it from tampering with the materials used for the presidential polls.
It predicated its request on the grounds that it needed to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the next round of elections.
The tribunal had last Friday granted the requests by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi to inspect electoral materials used in the conduct of the presidential election.
Atiku and Obi who are presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), for the election, have commenced their separate legal actions to upturned the declaration of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu as winner of the Febraury 25 presidential election.
Justice Joseph Ikyegh who led a panel of Justices of the Court of Appeal, ordered INEC to allow the two presidential candidates to inspect the electoral materials.
The Court of Appeal acts as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), where election petitions arising from the result of presidential elections are challenged by aggrieved candidates.
The election results as announced by INEC showed Tinubu polled a total of 8,794,726 votes to beat Atiku who scored a total of 6,984,520 votes, and Obi who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
In their separate ex parte motions filed by their counsel, they anchored their requests on provisions of the Electoral Act and the constitution in demanding an inspection of the election materials.
Both Atiku and Mr Obi have queried INEC’s failure to electronically transmit the results of the presidential election from polling units to its IREV portal.
While counsel to Obi, Alex Ejesieme, sought six prayers, Atiku’s counsel, Ademola Faloku, put forward seven prayers.
However in its application for variation of the tribunal orders, the electoral umpire explained that it needed to reconfigure the BVAS machines that were used for the 25 February polls for the 11 March elections and deploy them to polling units for Saturday’s election.
The commission said it would require sufficient time to reconfigure the BVAS needed to conduct the election that would take place in all the 36 states of the federation, except the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
In addition, INEC said its technical team had to be deployed on time to commence the re-configuration of the device which they said would be done one by one.
A source at the commission said the order was important if the Saturday’s governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections must hold as scheduled, otherwise, a postponement would become inevitable.