Politics
12 SANs representing Peter Obi get ready for a battle with INEC in court
The Court of Appeal in Abuja is set to rule 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, up which held on Saturday, February 27, 2023.
The court has set Wednesday, March 8, 2023, for the eagerly awaited ruling.
The legal team of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, a party in the suit, moved a motion requesting the court not to allow INEC to tamper with the evidence in the matter going to the Presidential Election Tribunal.
According to our findings, Obi’s legal team include at least twelve Senior Advocates of Nigeria. Some of them presented in order of seniority are 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 an inside source, Obi’s legal 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 informed the court that its forensic experts had not been granted access to INEC systems to inspect them before the said transfer of data, and the said process is not clearly spelt out to all parties concern.
Obi’s lawyers questioned the motives of INEC to be so hasty to compromise the principal evidence of the election umpire’s fraudulent manipulation of the election results.
In its response, the electoral body 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.
