2023: Politicians trying to manufacture of BVAS to rig – INEC

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

This was as he insisted that the commission has resolved to make 2023 general election free and fair, saying 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.

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

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.”

He assured that BVAS was built on dual basis — “online and offline”, while allaying fears of network problem that would make BVAS work effectively at the rural areas

Presenting his speech, 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 his confidence 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.”