By Princess-Ekwi Ajide, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, says it acknowledges the challenges to the optimal functionality of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and they are working to review and improve its functionality for biometric accreditation of voters in the forthcoming bye-elections and off-season Governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States just before the 2023 General Elections.
The Chairman of the Commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu who stated this while addressing Resident Electoral Commissioners at the first consultative meeting for the year, said, the outcome of all elections conducted since the introduction of BVAS had been positively adjudged by observers as credible.
He said the BVAS has performed optimally in verifying the authenticity of PVCs and uploading images of Polling Unit results to the IReV hence the Commission remains convinced that the deployment of technology in elections, will safeguard the integrity of the vote and provide a better guarantee for electoral credibility than the best manual process.
According to the INEC Chairman, the Commission has over the years made giant strides in improving electoral logistics, staff recruitment, training, deployment and introduction of technology for voter verification and authentication on Election day.
Professor Yakubu, noted that the creation of Registration Area Centres (RACs) improved the early opening of polls especially with the introduction to innovations which had been beneficial to the electoral process and the credibility of elections saying that in order to provide more eligible voters with the opportunity to register, the Commission is considering the devolution of the Continuous Voter Registration exercise nationwide beyond State and Local Government offices where the registration are currently taking place.
He restated that the Commission achieved the historic feat of expanding voter access to polling units nationwide last year, with the aim of decongesting densely populated polling units by converting Voting Points (VPs) and Voting Point Settlements (VPS) to Polling Units and relocating some of them to unserved and underserved areas to make it easier for voters on Election Day.
The INEC boss, however lamented that though the goal of creating more access to polling units has been achieved in many States, there are still congested Polling Units and other Polling Units with between 0 and 50 voters as was seen in some recent elections because the citizenry seem unaware about these polling units. This according to the Chairman, is why the Commission will intensify efforts to address the issue ahead of the forthcoming Ekiti and Osun Governorship elections and ultimately the 2023 General Election within the next few weeks.
