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…Blames political parties for voter apathy
From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Joash Ojo Amupitan, has confirmed the commission’s readiness for this month’s February 21 Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Area Council elections.
He gave the assurance after visiting several voting centres to inspect Saturday’s mock accreditation and voting exercise across the territory, expressing satisfaction over the functionality of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
The electoral umpire boss who led a high-powered delegation which included National Commissioners and the FCT Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), described BVAS as a perfected game changer for electoral integrity.
The polling units he visited include NIPOST in Area 10 Garki, Government Secondary School Wuse Zone 3, LEA Primary School Ushafa, Sagwari Primary School in Dutse and another school in Bwari.
According to him, the exercise was designed to pressure-test the commission’s operational readiness and technical efficiency of the upgraded BVAS devices.
Fielding questions from newsmen during the field assessment, Prof. Amupitan stressed that the commission is determined to iron out technical wrinkles well before the actual polls.
While expressing satisfaction over the functionality of the BVAS which accredited voters within five seconds, Amupitan, said: “As you know, this is a mock accreditation and election, it is basically to test the operational preparedness of the commission ahead of the election of February 21.”
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“Our major target and focus is to confirm the functionality of the BVAS which for us is the game changer because we have improved on the machine. We don’t want to use the main election as a test-run. We want to use the mock accreditation and election for the purpose of testing the functionality of the machine and the improvement made on it,” he said.
Speaking specifically on the efficiency of BVAS machine, the former university don, explained: “So far, I am very satisfied that the BVAS has worked excellently well. As part of simulating election scenario, we got somebody who has voted previously to test if BVAS can allow him go through the voting exercise again, but it popped up immediately to confirm that the voter has been accredited previously.”
“With this technology, there is no way anybody can be accredited twice or be involved in double voting and at the end, after announcing the results, the result sheet after it has been signed, will be synchronised.
“I am happy that we just had stakeholders consultative conference to prepare for this occasion and for the main election. We are surprised that the civil society and observers expected to be on ground are not here to give us feedback.
Nonetheless, the mock is a very worthy exercise.
“Let me also tell the residents of FCT that we will use the mock to create awareness and mobilise voters to participate in the election. If BVAS functions very well, the whole process will be fair, free and credible,” he assured.
Blaming the political parties for apathy during elections as the major challenge affecting the commission, Amupitan explained that it is the responsibility of the parties to mobilise voters.
His words: “One of the major challenges we have is voter apathy. This mock exercise is meant to improve on it towards ensuring that people are sensitised, mobilised. It is part of the responsibility of INEC to do Civic education, but it is not the responsibility of the commission to campaign to people to participate in the election.”
“It is the responsibility of the political parties. We will call on everybody to play their roles. We will try and play our part, as the commission, we will do what we are supposed to do and that is what we are doing like ensuring that our equipment and personnel are prepared.
“Of course, voter apathy has been generally on for several election years, but I am sure that this one can be better in terms of voter turnout. We are also imploring the media to circulate the message about this forthcoming election,” he appealed.
