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From Okwe Obi, Abuja
Nigerians in resident abroad under the aegis of Diaspora for Good Governance (DGG) have called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to subject the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVCs), Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), INEC Result Viewing Portals (IReV), and INEC Voter Enrollment Device (IVE) to integrity test before next month’s poll.
DGG claimed that the call became expedient as a result of the failure of the systems to address issues of multiple underage, and fake registrations.
Addressing newsmen yesterday in Abuja, a member of DGG, Chima Christian, noted that there were discrepancies in the invalidation of voters in different zones.
Christian warned that if noted addressed the exercise would be marred with irregularities.
“Some of us are aware of the CVRS exercise that ended in June 2022. And we looked at the data validation data. Out of 2.78 million Nigerians that were invalidated by INEC we noticed that 49.3% of all the 1.3 million Nigerians that were invalidated were coming from the South-South and South-East region,” he said.
“All regions of the country had an average rejection rate at 17%, whereas the South-East and the South-South had an average rejection rate at 35.2% which is almost twice of the national average.
“We have looked at the data and INEC said it was used as an excuse which is double registration, underaged registration and fake registration that did not meet INEC business rules.
“We looked at the system and we found out that the average is not as efficient as advertised. And we are saying that with a compromised system the election cannot be credible.
“It is on that basis that we are calling on INEC and Nigerians to subject this system to multi-stakeholders audit and integrity test because the only thing Nigerians know about these systems is what INEC had told us.
“And from what we know, these systems are not working as advertised. We now know that the IReV and BVAS systems are not as efficient as evidenced by multiple underage and outright fake registration on the voters register.
“And we are assimilating a situation where if the South East and South-South presented an anomaly in the voter invalidation register by disagreeing with the national average of 17% and they have a regional average of 35.2.
“We are assimilating a system where we have an average voting centre in Borno State which has a voting strength of 500.
“And out of 500, 300 voters show up for verification and BVAS system is able to verify 295 of those people and we have a system of equal voting strength anywhere in the South East and South-South present the same data and 300 people show up for verification and IReV is able to verify 150 of voters.”
