The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja has dismissed the Labour Party’s (LP) petition against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the electronic transmission of results.
INEC’s refusal to upload some results of the February 25 presidential election on its Results Viewing Portal (IRev), citing technical glitches, has been one of the contending issues the opposition parties are challenging in court.
However, the tribunal said the Electoral Act 2022 made no provision for electronic transmission of election results, stating that there is nothing in the law to show that the BVAS must electronically transmit polling unit results.
The five-man panel led by Justice Haruna Tsammani ruled on Wednesday, therefore, that the only technological device that was mandatory for the electoral commission to use for the election was the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
Citing the case of Oyetola vs. INEC, the Tribunal maintained that INEC’s Results Viewing Portal (IReV) is not a collation system.
“There is no provision for the electronic transmission of election results in the Electoral Act 2022,” says Justice Tsammani. “It is, at best, optional.”
The tribunal also held that the petitioner [the Labour Party] failed to establish that INEC deliberately refused to promptly upload polling unit results to IReV to manipulate the results in favor of Tinubu.
“The petitioner made the allegation of non-compliance a substantial part of their case. Under the provisions of Section 135(2) of the Electoral Act, they are required to show how such noncompliance substantially affected them. If they fail to show the same, the petition fails.”
