From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised to review and improve the noticeable challenges affecting the smooth functioning of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of the 2023 general elections.
The commission’s chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, gave the assurance in his remarks at the meeting with the Residential Electoral Commissioners (RECs) held in Abuja on Tuesday.
“On Election Day administration, the Commission has over the years made giant strides in improving electoral logistics, staff recruitment, training, deployment and the introduction of technology for voter verification and authentication. The creation of Registration Area Centres (RACs) improved the early opening of polls.
“The benefits of these new innovations to the electoral process and the credibility of our elections have been enormous. The outcome of elections conducted since the introduction of BVAS in the Isoko South I State Constituency bye-election, followed by the Anambra State governorship election and most recently in the FCT Area Council election has been positively adjudged by observers as credible. However, the challenges to the optimal functionality of the device are acknowledged and we are working on them.
“When the Commission introduced the BVAS last year, the compact device was intended to achieve two objectives. First is the verification of the genuineness of the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) and the fingerprint or facial authentication of voters during accreditation. Secondly, to replace the Z-pad for uploading the polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on Election Day.
“So far, the BVAS has performed optimally in verifying the authenticity of PVCs and uploading images of Polling Unit results to the IReV. We will review and improve its functionality for biometric accreditation of voters in the forthcoming bye-elections and off-season governorship elections before the 2023 General Election.
“The Commission remains convinced that the deployment of technology in our elections safeguards the integrity of the vote and provides a better guarantee for electoral credibility than the best manual process. The review of the Election Day administration, in general, is one of the issues to be discussed at this meeting,” he revealed the purpose of the meeting.
Prof Yakubu equally gave updates on the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), disclosing that; “in view of the forthcoming governorship elections, the Commission has decided to devolve the CVR exercise to Ward level in both Ekiti and Osun States to enable more citizens register.”
“Even as we continue to conduct elections, the CVR exercise which started in June last year is now in its 3rd quarter. In view of the forthcoming elections, the Commission has decided to devolve the CVR exercise to Ward level in both Ekiti and Osun States to enable more citizens to register.
“Similarly, in order to provide more eligible voters with the opportunity to register, the Commission is considering the devolution of the exercise nationwide beyond our State and Local Government offices where the registration currently takes place. The devolution of the CVR exercise to other designated centres is one of the major issues for discussion at this meeting.
“Closely related to the issue of CVR is the balanced distribution of voters to polling units nationwide. Last year, the Commission achieved the historic feat of expanding voter access to polling units nationwide. The idea is to decongest the densely populated polling units by converting the erstwhile Voting Points (VPs) and Voting Point Settlements (VPS) to Polling Units and relocating some of them to unserved and underserved areas to make it easier for voters on Election Day.
“While this lofty goal has been achieved in many States, there are still congested Polling Units and other Polling Units with between 0 and 50 voters as we saw in some of the recent elections. Over the next few weeks, the Commission will intensify efforts to address the issue ahead of the forthcoming Ekiti and Osun governorship elections and ultimately the 2023 General Election. Finding a solution to this issue is one of the reasons for convening this meeting,” he noted.