From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has concluded configuration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to be deployed for the Ekiti State governorship election on  June 18.

Chairman of the commission, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, who disclosed this,  yesterday, also announced that arrangements had been finalised for the conduct of a mock voter accreditation.

Yakubu, who spoke at the second quarterly meeting with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Abuja, also announced the suspension of online registration in the next three weeks to enable online registrants complete their registration physically at the designated centres before the exercise is suspended on June 30, 2022.

“On election technology, we have reviewed the functionality of BVAS following the complaints received after the recent Area Council elections in the FCT held on February 12, 2022. Two weeks later, the commission conducted six bye-elections in four states across four geo-political zones of the country covering rural, sub-urban and urban areas. It was the most extensive geo-political deployment of the BVAS since it was pioneered in the Isoko South I State Constituency bye-election in Delta State in June last year. In these bye-elections, the BVAS functioned optimally as attested to by the reports of your field observers accredited by the Commission.

“The lessons learnt from the most recent bye-elections have been taken into consideration as we prepare for the forthcoming Ekiti and Osun states governorship elections. The commission has just finished the configuration of the BVAS for the Ekiti State governorship election. We will also undertake a mock voter accreditation exercise in Ekiti State ahead of the main election on June 18, 2022, the details of which will be announced shortly,” he said.

On the cleaning up of the registration data, Yakubu said the commission presented a report on the CVR exercise covering the period from June to December 2021.

“For the first time, the commission deployed the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) which is a comprehensive and robust system involving not just the fingerprint identification but also the facial biometric recognition,” he said.