The Labour Party (LP) has threatened to protest at Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) offices across the country over the Commission’s refusal to allow it to inspect materials used for the presidential election on February 25th, 2023.
The party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, had requested that the Court of Appeal issue an injunction preventing INEC from reconfiguring the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). The court, however, granted the Commission permission to reconfigure it and requested that Obi be granted access to inspect the materials.
Dr Yunusa Tanko, spokesman for the LP Presidential Campaign Council (LP-PCC), accused the electoral umpire of not following the court order days after the ruling.
“As we speak INEC has chosen to obey the court order given to it to reconfigure the BVAS machine, which they doing right now and ignoring the order granted to us to inspect electoral materials,” he said in the statement dated March 10, 2023.
“We, therefore, call on the general public to note the level of lawlessness and brazen disobedience to a lawful order of a court by an important statutory agency such as INEC, which is a well-calculated attempt to undermine and frustrate the presentation of the Petition by the Labour Party and its Presidential candidate before the tribunal in good time.
“We, therefore, want to state that we will not fail to call our supporters to march to INEC offices nationwide in a non-violent protest which is allowed by law. This is to curtail the flagrant disobedience to court orders by INEC.”