2023: No going back on BVAS, Electronic Transmission of results says INEC Boss
Joel Oladele, Abuja
Amidst rumoured plots to truncate the 2023 general election by some politicians through crooked means, including stopping the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and electronic transmission of results, the Independence National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has said there is no going back on its plan to make use of the BVAS and transmission of election results electronically.
Prof. Yakubu made this known on Thursday, during a quarterly consultative meeting of the commission with the media in Abuja.
According to him, the commission will not in any way bow to pressure from any quarters as it is fully committed to delivering credible elections with the aid of appropriate technology.
“With exactly 120 days until the 2023 General Election, we are clearly heading down the home stretch. At a similar consultative meeting with political parties yesterday, I reassured Nigerians of our commitment to credible elections supported by appropriate technology.
“Voters will be accredited by means of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). There will be no incident form. Results will be transmitted to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real time on Election Day. We are committed to ensuring that the 2023 General Election is transparent and credible, reflecting the will of the Nigerian people.”
Speaking on new voters’ registration, the chairman said a total number of 12,289,944 Nigerians have successfully completed the registration as new voters, out of which 2,780,756 (22.6%) were identified as ineligible after a clean-up exercise by the commission.
“You may recall that the Commission had repeatedly assured Nigerians that our process of cleaning up the register is robust. After a rigorous cleaning-up of the data using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS), a total of 2,780,756 (22.6%) were identified as ineligible registrants and invalidated from the record, among them are double/multiple registrants, underaged persons and outrightly fake registrations that fail to meet our business rules.
“Consequently, the number of valid registrations (post-ABIS) is 9,518,188. A copy has already been uploaded to the Commission’s website and social media platforms.
The chairman also said the Commission has so far identified 23 Registration Officers involved in unethical conduct of registering fake voters during the Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise and disciplinary action has commenced against the perpetrators.
“The Commission deployed thousands of diligent staff for the CVR exercise and the vast majority of them discharged their duties conscientiously. Unfortunately, a few of them did not. The fictitious registrations were carried out by some of our Registration Officers involved in the field exercise and could easily be traced.
“Each registration machine is operated using an access code tied to a dedicated e-mail assigned to a staff member. There is therefore an audit trail that gives the total number of persons registered by each official involved in the registration exercise. In some cases, some of them made as many as 40 attempts or more to register one fake voter.
“As a result, the Commission has so far identified 23 Registration Officers involved in this unethical conduct and disciplinary action has commenced. We shall continue to protect the integrity of our voters’ register. It is pivotal to credible elections. It is also a national asset and easily the largest database of citizens in Africa and one of the largest in the world.
“The 9,518,188 new voters have been added to the existing register of 84,004,084 voters. The PRELIMINARY register of voters in Nigeria now stands at 93,522,272. It is preliminary because Section 19(1) and (2) of the Electoral Act 2022 requires the Commission to display the hard copies of the register of voters for each Registration Area (Ward) and Local Government Area (and simultaneously publish the entire register on the Commission’s website) for a period of two weeks for scrutiny, claims and objections by citizens not later than 90 days to a General Election.
“Accordingly, in the next few days, the Commission will print 9,352,228 pages of the register. The hard copy will be displayed for each of the 8,809 Registration Areas (Wards) and 774 Local Government Areas nationwide while the entire register will be published on our website for claims and objections as required by law.
“The display of the physical register will take place at the designated centers from Saturday 12th – Friday 25thNovember 2022. Further details, including the procedure for filing claims and objections, will be released by the Commission next week. I would like to appeal to all Nigerians to seize the opportunity of the display to scrutinize the list and help us to clean it up further so that the final register of voters for the 2023 General Election can be compiled and published.”
Speaking further on PVCs of the new registrants, Yakubu said the printing is ongoing and it will soon be ready for collection in the next couple of days.
“The Commission is also working hard to ensure the completion of printing of remaining PVCs for new voters as well as those that applied to transfer or the replacement of their lost or damaged cards. In the coming days, we will also inform Nigerians of the detailed plan to ensure a seamless collection of the PVCs
“We are aware that Nigerians expect an improvement in the procedure for PVC collection. Since the end of the CVR in July this year, we have been working to ensure that citizens have a pleasant experience when they come to collect their cards, including collaboration with the Media for a pilot exercise in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). We are exploring the possibility of scaling up the FCT pilot for nationwide application.”
