INEC has powers to decide how to transmit election results — Appeal Court

The Court of Appeal sitting in Lagos has ruled that the Electoral Act gave INEC ‘very wide discretionary powers’ to determine how it wants to transmit or transfer election results.

The appellate court made the declaration while setting aside the judgment of a Federal High Court, which ordered INEC to directly and electronically upload the election results of the Governorship and State of Assembly elections from the polling units to the IREV.

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The appellate court presided over by Justice Abubakar Umar also described the suit, filed by the Labour Party, its governorship candidate, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour and 41 Others, as an abuse of the court process.

The court, in the judgment endorsed by the two other members of the panel of justice, Justice Olukayode Bada and Justice Onyekachi Otisi, held that the power to make a regulation or guideline necessarily entails the authority to amend or vary it.