One major evidence that settles election rigging cases is the ballot paper and whoever has access to it can prove quite a lot.
I light of this, the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is seeking access to these materials.
On Tuesday he sought approval from the Court of Appeal to access sensitive materials used in the presidential election.
This is coming days after an Appeal Court granted a request for access to the materials from the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and that of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar.
Basically, they want to review the sensitive materials used in the 2023 presidential election.
Top in their priority is to gather evidence to prove their case in the court against the president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Furthermore, the opposition parties claim Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) rigged the election in his favor.
At the court session, where the request was made on Tuesday, the lawyer to Mr Tinubu, Akintola Makinde, said he needed to inspect, scan and make photocopies of some of the electoral materials.
This he said would enable him to prepare his defense against petitions that would seek to nullify his election.
“The materials will be relevant in helping us to prepare our defense and also make comparison with the information contained in INEC’s back-end server,” Makinde said.
Obi Claims INEC May Tamper With Evidence
Peter Obi has urged the Presidential Election Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal, Abuja, not to allow INEC to tamper with election materials, saying its evidence will be tampered with.
Obi’s lawyer, Onyechi Ikpeazu SAN, sought an order allowing his counsel to carry out digital, forensic, and physical inspection of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices.
This is to prove that the just concluded poll was rigged.
He argued before the court that the information in the BVAS represents the real polling unit results.
He reveals that a certified true copy of election results was needed for verification purposes.
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He prayed the court to grant his request to “ensure that the evidence is preserved and not tampered with”.
He argues that “the information on the INEC back end server can be changed.”
But INEC’s lawyer, T. Inuwa SAN, urged the court to dismiss the application.
He argues that “granting the application will cause us a serious delay in conducting the forthcoming elections.
“There are about 176,000 polling units across the nation and which we need to reconfigure each BVAS devices.
“No information will be lost by reason of transferring BVAS to our backend server,” Inuwa maintained.
After hearing their arguments, the court said it would rule on Wednesday, March 8.
