The Independent National Electoral Commission has asked the Presidential Election Petition Court to vary the orders that were granted to the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party and Labour Party, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, respectively, to inspect materials used for the last presidential election.
INEC, in a motion on notice filed on March 4, is urging the court to alter the injunction which restricted it from tampering with materials used for the election.
The commission stated it needs to adapt the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System for the next round of elections.
The appeal court had on March 3 granted permission to Atiku and Obi to review electoral documents used by INEC in the conduct of the February 25 presidential election.
A panel of the appeal court headed by Judge Joseph Ikyegh granted the authorization after two separate ex parte motions brought by Atiku and Obi, who placed second and third respectively in the presidential election won by Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress.
In the case submitted by the commission and seen by NAN, the commission is seeking the court to alter the decision to enable it to reconfigure its 176,846 BVAS for the March 11 governorship and state houses of assembly polls.
NAN reports that that is the single plea in the application of the electoral umpire submitted before the court.
No date has nevertheless been assigned for hearing of the application.
According to a source, given the amount of BVAS necessary to conduct the election throughout the states, INEC has to reconfigure the BVAS utilized for the February 25 elections and deploy them to polling units for the March 11 polls.
The source claimed that the technical team of the commission had to be deployed on time to start the reconfiguration of the devices, which had to be done one by one.
The insider further said the order was essential as not receiving it might result in the postponing of the Saturday gubernatorial and state houses of assembly elections.
