Wilson Adekumola
The Independent National Electoral Commission, has debunked the allegation blocking aggrieved political parties access to election materials as directed by the Appeal Court.
Daily Post reported that INEC National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye, made the declaration when speaking in an interview on Arise TV on Sunday.
Okoye advised lawyers of the aggrieved parties to take their request to appropriately authority so that, “the issues can be handled expeditiously.”
Okoye stated that INEC, at the national level, does not conduct elections, but rather elections are conducted at the state and local government level.
He also revealed that the commission will give direction to all parties on the appropriate channels where they will find the materials they want.
He said, “The commission will not deliberately or flagrantly disobey the order of a properly constituted court of law, and in this case, the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal sitting at the Court of Appeal.
“I think that what the parties involved in this election should do, is to send lawyers who understand the trajectory of the electoral process and request for some of these materials.
“If you are requesting to scan ballot papers used during the election, ballot papers are not in the headquarters of INEC.
“Some of these ballot papers are still in our local government offices and so the proper place to scan them will be at our local government offices.”
The commissioner said INEC is only resetting the BVAS in preparation for the new date of the governoship and state House of Assembly elections.
While noting that the BVAS will not allow itself to reconfigure until all the data in it has been uploaded to the commission’s server, he said, it is not possible that INEC will allow individuals to view the reconfiguring of the BVAS, noting that the device contains sensitive information of biometrics of other individuals.
