Politicians trying to manufacture BVAS, INEC official alleges

The Head of Department, Voter Education and Publicity of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Achumie Rex, on Wednesday, alleged that some politicians were making frantic efforts to manufacture the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machine and hack into the commission’s server ahead of the 2023 general election.

This was as he reiterated the electoral umpire’s resolve to make the 2023 general election free and fair, adding that there would be simultaneous accreditation and voting on election days.

Rex stated this at a two-day workshop for civil society organisations on Voter Education, organised by the Transition Monitoring Group and supported by the USAID.

Fielding questions from participants shortly after delivering a paper titled: ‘Technology and 2023 election commission’, Rex revealed that INEC was working round the clock to ensure that the integrity of its server was maintained during and after the elections.

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He said, “There is no room to hack into INEC server,” adding that “politicians are doing everything possible to get into the INEC server or even to manufacture BVAS, but unfortunately for them, INEC is three steps ahead of their plots.”

Allaying fears of network problem that would make BVAS work effectively at the rural areas, he said that BVAS was built on dual basis — “online and offline”.

Delivering his paper, Rex said, “At the moment, Nigerians are gradually bidding farewell to the dark days when the voter register was infested with foreign names and those days when election results were announced while voting was still ongoing. […]the 22 innovations introduced by the electoral management body, including the IReV and BVAS, have enabled the country move light years away from its electoral debacle.

“Recent revelations by Professor Mahmood Yakubu show that the commission has conducted 105 elections using the IReV, while it has uploaded 32,985 (99.13%) out of a possible 33,275 results, having recorded 100% upload rate in the just concluded Ekiti and Osun governorship elections.

“Apart from voting, results management is easily the most critical aspect of election administration. While voting is an open and public activity, results management is usually run by a few election officials, mostly outside the glare of the public. Thus, there is need to promote transparency in this in the best possible way.

“Other innovations that seem to have enhanced the system include biometric voter registration, computer-based registration of voters, online pre-registration, the Permanent Voter Cards with chips, creating online portals for candidates, observers and political party agents, amongst others, which have all gone a long way in standardising Nigeria’s election management system,” he said.

He expressed optimism that with the introduction of various technology into the country’s election management, which, according to him, had boosted citizens confidence in the process, citizens participation in the elections would “hit at least a 50% voter turnout mark.”

In his remark, the chairman of the TMG, Auwal Musa, who was represented at the workshop by Miriam Menkiti, said the workshop was part of its one-year project tagged ‘Strengthening civic advocacy and local engagement (SCALE) project’.

He said that the aim of the workshop “is to achieve the desired outcomes in improving quality of elections in Nigeria by ensuring that citizens are adequately and effectively mobilised and sensitised in order to actively participate in elections in Nigeria.”