See Photos Of Peter Obi At Tribunal Ahead Of Ruling On BVAS Reconfiguration

Pictures of the standard bearer of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal to witness the ruling on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) have emerged.

Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (NEC) had requested that it should be allowed to reconfigure the BVAS used for the presidential election ahead of the March 11 governorship elections.

Obi stormed the tribunal sitting inside the Court of Appeal in Abuja, in the company of the LP National Chairman, Julius Abure, the Senator-elect for Anambra Central Senatorial District, Chief Victor Umeh, and some party leaders.

The tribunal is expected to also rule on a request by the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, to be granted access to sensitive materials INEC used for the presidential election.

Both Obi and the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, had urged the court to refuse INEC’s request.

INEC had insisted that the reconfiguration was necessary since the BVAS would also be deployed for the next round of elections, starting with Governorship and State Assembly elections billed for Saturday, as well as other rescheduled elections.

It maintained that without a prompt variation of the order the court earlier 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.

However, Obi and his party, in a fresh application marked: CA/PEC/09m/23, also sought permission to be allowed to conduct a physical inspection of all the BVAS machines that were used for the presidential poll.

Obi and the LP, through their team of lawyers led by Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, said the essence of their application was to enable them to extract data embedded in the BVAS, “which represent the actual results from Polling Units”.

They specifically applied for the leave to carry out a digital forensic and physical inspection of BVAS as well as to obtain the Certified True Copy, CTC, of all the data in the BVAS.

According to Obi’s lawyer, Ikpeazu, the application is to ensure that the evidence is preserved before the BVAS are reconfigured by INEC.

He added that if the BVAS machines are wiped out, it will affect the substance of their case before the tribunal.

See photos of Obi in court