Judiciary
AS the Court of Appeal in Abuja is set to rule today on the application filed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) seeking to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) it used to conduct the 2023 presidential election, which held on Saturday, February 27, 2023, the legal team of Mr. Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), being assembled for the epic legal battle to upturn INEC’s declaration of a winner in the polls has started to become public.
According to findings, Obi’s legal team at the moment, includes at least twelve Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN). Some of those who have already signed up for the legal battle ahead include Dr Livy Uzoukwu, SAN; Chief Awa Kalu, SAN; Dr Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN; P.I.N. Ikwueto, SAN; Chief Ben Anyachebe, SAN; S.T. Hon, SAN; Arthur Obi Okafor, SAN; Ik Ezechukwu, SAN; J.S. Okutepa, SAN; Dr Mrs. Valerie Azinge, SAN; Emeka Okpoko, SAN and Alex Ejesieme, SAN.
According to a source, the team is still being constituted and “these are not all the senior advocates of Nigeria on the team. More are still signing up.”
Obi’s legal team had argued that the data on the BVAS contains the substance of the Labour Party’s presidential candidate’s case against INEC’s “unlawful manipulation of the February 25 election’s results and processes.”
The team had informed the court that its forensic experts had not been granted access to INEC’s systems to inspect them before the said transfer of data, stressing that the said process is not clearly spelt out to all parties concerned.
Obi’s lawyers have questioned the motives of INEC to be so hasty to compromise the principal evidence of the electoral umpire’s “fraudulent manipulation of the election results.”
In its response, the electoral body had argued that it would transfer the data on the BVAS to a backup server. INEC wishes to clean up the BVAS for conducting the governorship and state legislative elections billed for Saturday, March 11, 2023.
The case is being heard by a three-person Court of Appeal panel headed by Justice Joseph Ikyegh.
The future of Nigeria’s democracy has come under scrutiny following the conduct of what many have adjudged a flawed presidential election by INEC in which the electoral body declared the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the winner.
The three main opposition parties, Labour Party (LP), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), have all rejected the election results announced by INEC.
LP and PDP, in an unprecedented move, jointly called for the resignation of the INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, on February 28, 2023 and for the cancellation of the exercise, which they described as a “travesty” and “rape of democracy”.
Mr. Peter Obi, a former governor of Anambra who ran for president with the backing of the youth population, is widely believed to have won the election by a wide margin, beating a former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, and the Bola Tinubu, a former Lagos governor.
–(Text excluding headline from GP News)
KN
Tags: Bola Tinubu BVAS Court of Appeal INEC Labour Party Peter Obi
