“All Data on BVAS Will Be Safe During Reconfiguration”: INEC Assures Nigerians, Court

The 2023 presidential election tribunal and opposition political parties have been assured that the data on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) is safe This assurance was handed to Peter Obi of the Labour Party and the tribunal bu the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) According to the commission, the data on the BVAS will be transferred to the commission’s server during its planned reconfiguration of the machines.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that all the data on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) used for February 25 presidential poll is intact. Tanimu Inuwa, the commission’s lead counsel in the presidential elections tribunal matter between the Labour Party’s flag bearer, INEC and the president-elect gave the assurance on Tuesday, March 7, at the Court of Appeal in Abuja.

While opposing an application filed by the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, on BVAS deployed in the presidential poll, Inuwa said all the information on the BVAS is safe, the Punch reports. He, however, informed the court that there is a need for the BVAS to be reconfigured in order to be used for the governorship and House of Assembly election scheduled for Saturday, March 11.

Inuwa argued failure to re-configure the BVAS would delay the conduct of governorship and houses of assembly elections. INEC’s counsel’s argument followed a submission by Peter Obi’s lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu that the essence of the application was to enable the legal team to extract data embedded in the BVAS.

Ikpeazu said the data on the BVAS represents the actual results from polling units in the presidential election which was conducted on Saturday, February 25.

He said;

“My lords, this is to ensure that the evidence is preserved before the BVAS are reconfigured by INEC. This is because if they are wiped out, it will affect the substance of the case.” To this, Inuwa urged the court to refuse the application stating that granting the request by Obi would affect its preparations for the impending governorship and House of Assembly elections.

Inuwa argued:

“We have already stated in our affidavit that no information in the BVAS will be lost as we will transfer all the data in the BVAS to our backend server. “We need the BVAS configured. So, granting this application will be a clog in the process and may delay the conduct of the elections.”