The March 11 elections into the governorship and Houses of Assembly, may not hold after all if Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), insist that taking possession of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BIVAS), to be used for them, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has said.
The commission, has therefore run back to the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which is sitting as the Presidential Election Court (PEC), to rescind its earlier order last week forbidding it from tampering with the devices, if they must be used for the coming polls.
The commission is arguing that for it to conduct the election, the BIVAS, which were used for the February 25 polls, must be reconfigured with new data relating to the election, without which it would be difficult for the exercise to go on as planned.
To this end, the electoral umpire is begging the appellate court, sitting as the court of first instance, where Atiku and Obi, had run with their petitions challenging the election outcome, which declared Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate as the winner.
Both the former Vice President and former Governor of Anambra State, had obtained the order of the court, permitting them to inspect all the materials used for the election and barring the commission from tampering with them.
But crying out to the court over the implication of the order, INEC in a legal action dated March 4, urged the appellate court, to vary the order to enable it reconfigure the BVAS, it used for the presidential poll, critical for deployment for the next round of elections, starting with governorship and state assemblies elections billed for Saturday, as well as other rescheduled elections.
Without a prompt variation of the inspection order granted to Obi and Atiku, especially the aspect restraining it from tampering with formation contained in the BVAS, it would be difficult for it to proceed with the scheduled elections, the commission, said.
It will be recalled that the a three-member panel of the court, last Friday, gave Obi and Atiku the nod to have access to all the sensitive materials the INEC deployed for the conduct of the presidential election that held on February 25.
The panel, led by Justice Joseph Ikyegh made the orders after it heard two separate ex-parte applications the two aggrieved presidential candidates filed alongside their political parties.
Cited as respondents in the matter were INEC, the acclaimed winner of the presidential election, Bola Tinubu, as well as his party, the All Progressives Congress, APC.
Both applications were predicated on Section146 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, Paragraph 47 (1, 2 &3) of the First Schedule of the Electoral Act of 2022, as well as under the inherent jurisdiction of the Court as referenced by Section 6 (6) A & B of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
While Obi, in his application marked CA/PEC/02M/23, which was moved by his team of lawyers led by Mr. Alex Ejesieme (SAN), sought six principal reliefs, Atiku’s lawyer, Mr. Adedamola Faloku, sought seven prayers from the tribunal.
Specifically, the applicants persuaded the court to compel INEC to allow them to obtain documents in its custody that were used for the presidential election.
They maintained that the requested documents would aid their petition against the outcome of the presidential contest that was declared in favour of candidate of the APC, Tinubu.
More so, Obi and Atiku obtained order of the court granting them leave to file the application, outside or before the pre-hearing session of the planned substantive petitions.
INEC had declared Tinubu of the APC as winner of the presidential poll, ahead of 17 other candidates that contested the election.
According to INEC, Tinubu, scored a total of 8,794,726 votes to defeat Atiku who polled a total of 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the LP who came third with a total of 6,101,533 votes.
Both PDP and LP had since rejected the outcome of the election and vowed to challenge it in court.
Under the Electoral Act 2022, any candidate dissatisfied with the return made by the INEC, shall within 21 days after the date of the declaration of the result of the election, file a petition before the tribunal.
An election tribunal shall deliver its judgement in writing within 180 days from the date the petition was filed.