Plateau Gov’ship Poll: Tribunal orders INEC to produce voter register, BVAS

The Election Petition Tribunal sitting in Jos, has ordered Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to produce the voter register and Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), used in selected polling units during the March 18 governorship election in the state.

The chairman of the tribunal, R Irele-ifeneh, gave the order yesterday during the commencement of hearing of the petition filed by the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the March 18 election, Dr. Nentawe Yilwatda.

The APC candidate is challenging the victory of Governor Caleb Mutfwang of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the tribunal.

The order was issued following the inability of INEC to produce all certified true copies of documents as stated in the subpoena issued to the INEC chairman and Plateau Resident Electoral Commissioner by the tribunal.

Appearing on behalf of the INEC chairman, Salisu Aliyu, a senior system analyst from INEC ICT department and Festus Aisien, an assistant director at INEC voter registry department, told the court that their appearance was in respect of the subpoena issued to INEC chairman to submit the certified true copies of accredited data extracted from the INEC backend server and form EC8A from INEC Result Portal (IREV).

The representatives of the chairman only produced the true certified copies of accredited data from BVAS and a part of the list of voters required from the voter register in a hard copy while the remaining list of voters was in a soft copy.

Aliyu and Festus stated that they were not able to bring the BVAS machines to the court and the remaining voter register due to the bulky nature of the items.

But counsel to the petitioner, Kayode Olatoke (SAN), objected to their submissions, saying that all items listed in the subpoena must be presented.

After the submission of the counsel to the petitioner, the court ordered INEC to produce all documents and items as stated in the subpoena within one week.