Some supporters of the Labour Party have raised alarm over a move by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reconfigure its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of Saturday’s governorship election, alleging that it is a plot to wipe out evidence of possible manipulation of the February 25 presidential election.
The electoral body had approached the Court of Appeal in Abuja, praying it to vary the orders it granted for candidates of the Labour Party, and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to be allowed to inspect sensitive materials that were used for the presidential election
INEC, in its legal process dated March 4, urged the appellate court, which will sit as the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, to vary the order to enable it to reconfigure the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, it used for the presidential poll.
It told the court that the configuration was necessary since the BVAS would also be deployed for the next round of elections, starting with governorship and state assemblies elections billed for Saturday, as well as other rescheduled elections.
According to INEC, 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.
However, some legal and tech experts have alleged that the move by INEC is aimed at removing evidence contained in the BVAs regarding possible rigging of the presidential election.
Reacting to the move, Abdul Mahmoud, @AbdulMahmud01, a lawyer, rights activist and supporter of the Labour Party noted that, “INEC wants to scrub all evidence with this reconfiguration of BVAS nonsense. LP and PDP should oppose it,”
Similarly, tech entrepreneur, Dr Aloy Chife, @ChifeDr, noted, “Reconfigure? Sounds like INEC is seeking to refactor BVAS code, ie restructure it.
“Will ADVISE all parties to seek a Court order to preserve the contents of the servers. And prohibit tampering with any data – original or reproduction – stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise.
“In simple terms, lockdown all originals, backups and instances – cloud or locally hosted.
“Reconfiguring” or technically, Refactoring the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for reading PVCs/voter authentication (or any software) is simply an attempt to improve baseline efficiency.
“Re BVAS, essentially an admission that it failed to function according to design. Question: What were the identified system flaws? And could the flaws have substantially impacted the process and consequently the election outcome?
