Materials Inspection: We have nothing to conceal — INEC

Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, has promised the Labour Party, LP’s legal team that the Commission is ready to furnish any documents requested by the party to prosecute its case at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.

Yakubu offered the guarantee when he met with the team of 60 lawyers led by Livy Uzoukwu on Monday.

Yakubu told the team that the Commission would also meet with its Resident Electoral Commissioners, or RECs, in the states to lay up mechanisms for material inspection in the states.

“INEC has nothing to conceal. Documents that are available at the headquarters will be distributed quickly.

“We are meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners today to consider how other records at the state level can be made available to you as soon as possible,” he said.

The Labour Party’s legal team was visiting INEC headquarters to explore how the records could be obtained.

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Remember that the party had previously won a court order instructing the electoral umpire to allow it to inspect the materials used in the February 25 elections.

Last Wednesday, the Presidential Election Petition Court, sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja, granted INEC permission to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, which it deployed for the presidential election.

A three-member panel of justices unanimously decided that preventing the electoral authority from altering the BVAS would have a negative impact on Saturday’s governorship and state assembly elections.

It disregarded complaints expressed by the Labour Party, LP, and its presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, to INEC’s decision to reconfigure all BVAS.

According to the court, granting Obi and his party’s concerns would “tie the respondent, INEC’s hands.”

Furthermore, it was noted that INEC had told the court in an affidavit that the accreditation data included in the BVAS would not be tampered with or lost because it would be maintained and easily accessed from its accredited back-end server.