The legal team of the Labour Party Presidential candidate, Peter Obi says it may be forced to commence committal proceedings against the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, this Monday due to its failure to allow it access to relevant election materials
Speaking exclusively to ait.live on Sunday, one of the lawyers for Peter Obi, Alex Ejieseme (SAN) said the commission has refused to grant it access to carry out a forensic audit of the server where data related to February 25, 2023, presidential election are stored
The inspection of election materials and forensic audit followed an order of the Court of Appeal granted to Peter Obi and the Labour Party on March 3, for unfettered access to inspect the sensitive materials deployed for the election.
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The applicants said they needed to review the materials to enable it to prepare for its petition which they are seeking to challenge INEC’s declaration of the APC candidate Bola Tinubu as the winner of last month’s presidential election.
Shortly after the grant of the order, INEC approached the same Court of Appeal seeking a variation of the order on grounds that it needed to reconfigure the BVAS preparatory to the Governorship and States House of Assembly elections earlier scheduled for March 11.
While the court granted INEC’s request, it also ordered that it preserves the data which the commission assured via an undertaking that the information will be uploaded into its backup servers for access by whoever needs it
Five days after, the Obi legal team is claiming it had yet to be granted access to the server. Ejieseme told AIT, “We just want to have a forensic audit of the server. They have refused to allow us. We are commencing committal proceedings on Monday
Responding to AIT’s inquiries on the matter on Monday, INEC National Commissioner in charge of voter education and publicity Festus Okoye said it has no BVAS now because all have been reconfigured except for Lagos and Kano.
Okoye added, “The Commission already got a court order. What political parties need is accreditation data.
“No BVAS in INEC now, because all the BVAS have been reconfigured except Lagos and Kano. All the BVAS are at the State Office. The accreditation data is available in documents”.
He added that any party that needs the documents can pay to get them.
(Editor: Paul Akhagbemhe)
