“We Have Nothing To Hide”, INEC to Labour Party

The head of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has promised the Labour Party, LP’s legal team that the commission is prepared to give the party all the papers it needs to pursue its case at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal.

On Monday, when he met with the group of 60 attorneys led by Livy Uzoukwu, Yakubu gave the guarantee.

Yakubu, speaking to the group, stated that the Commission would also meet with its Resident Electoral Commissioners, or RECs, in the states to determine the specifics of the materials inspection process there.

“INEC has nothing to hide. Documents available at the headquarters will be given immediately.

“We are meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners today and we will discuss how other documents at the state level could also be made available to you speedily,” he stated.

The legal team for the Labour Party was at the INEC headquarters to talk about how to get the documents.

Remember that the party already won a court ruling ordering the electoral umpire to permit it to see the materials used for the voting on February 25.

Also, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS, that INEC utilized for the presidential election was approved for reconfiguration by the Presidential Election Petition Court, or PEPC, which convened last Wednesday at the Court of Appeal in Abuja.

A three-judge panel of the court ruled unanimously that preventing the electoral authority from redesigning the BVAS would have a negative impact on Saturday’s elections for governor and state parliament.

It disregarded the concerns the Labour Party, LP, and Mr. Peter Obi, the party’s presidential candidate, had about INEC’s decision to reorganize all of the BVAS.

The court stated that granting Obi and his party’s objections would “tie the respondent, INEC’s hands.”

Additionally, it mentioned that INEC had stated in an affidavit it submitted to the court that the accreditation data contained in the BVAS would be kept and easily retrievable from its authorized back-end server, guaranteeing that they could not be altered or destroyed.