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General News of Monday, 13 March 2023

Source: www.mynigeria.com

INEC denies refusing PDP, LP access to election materials

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has rubbished allegations that it refused aggrieved political parties in the 2023 general election from inspecting election materials as ordered by the Appeal Court.

This was made known to the public by INEC National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, Festus Okoye in an interview on Arise TV on Sunday, March 13.

Okoye advised lawyers of the aggrieved parties to channel their request appropriately, so that, “the issues can be handled expeditiously.” He further noted that elections are not conducted by the electoral body at the National level but at the state and local government levels.

The INEC Commissioner also stated that the commission will direct the parties to the appropriate place 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.”

Okoye said INEC is only resetting the BVAS, to recognize the new date for the forthcoming election.

He explained that the BVAS will not allow itself to reconfigure until all the data in it has been uploaded to the commission’s server.

Okoye ruled out the possibility of INEC allowing individuals to witness the reconfiguring of the BVAS, saying the device contains sensitive information of biometrics of other individuals, reports Daily Post.