Right now, the fear of BVAS is the beginning of wisdom among politicians. It is one issue many of them talk about, everyday. While some like it, others detest it. The introduction of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is seen by many political analysts as a positive game changer, although some don’t like it.
Recall that BVAS was used during the governorship elections of Ekiti and Osun States months back. It was adjudged as one of the best innovations to Nigeria’s electoral processes in recent times.
INEC has insisted that it will use BVAS. It has declared that it will deploy over 200,000 BVAS across the country for the 2023 general election. If INEC goes ahead with this plan and sincerely executes the elections with BVAS modality, an analyst said, Nigeria is likely to have one of the most transparent elections this 2023. That is also the popular view. That is why many feel INEC deserves commendation for the introduction of BVAS.
Similarly, President Muhammadu Buhari should be thanked for signing into law the 2022 Electoral Act which allows the use of BVAS and other superior tamper resistant electronic devices for elections. The civil society organisations and others who mounted pressure on Buhari to sign the 2022 Electoral Act, when he was prevaricating in signing it into law, deserve plaudits.
Many feel, if properly deployed, BVAS will eliminate many of the electoral malpractices hindering the conduct of transparent elections in Nigeria. With BVAS, there will be no manual accreditation of voters or incident forms, as the right to vote depends on electronic accreditation using the voter’s finger print or face imprint. The crisis that usually arises through incident forms and excess voting will be eliminated. There will be no need for ballot snatching because that would be a waste of time. The election results would be announced at the polling units at the end of voting and transmitted right from there to the INEC server which is monitored by candidates, party stakeholders, CSOs, and INEC from various Situation Rooms. There will be no room for change of figures at the local government or state collation centres. Collation centres will be mere academic funneling points, unlike in the past where it used to be the centres of election results manipulation and vote stealing.
This has given hope to Nigerians and many believe that it has motivated Nigerians to register to vote in 2023 with the expectation that with BVAS, their votes are likely to count.
The confusion started when INEC’s National Commissioner in charge of Information and Voter Education, Mr Festus Okoye, reportedly said the collation of results of the 2023 general elections will be done manually, despite the adoption of electronic transmission of results.
He stressed that the commission would transmit results from polling units to its result-viewing portal (IREV), as witnessed in recent offseason elections, but explained that the Electoral Act was clear on how collation should be done.
“There is a marked difference between the transfer/transmission of results and the collation of results. Section 50(2) of the Electoral Act, 2022 gives the commission the absolute discretion to determine the mode and procedure of voting in an election and the transmission of election results,” Okoye said.
“Sections 60 and 62 of the Electoral Act govern post-election procedure and collation of election results. Section 60(1) of the Act provides that the presiding officer shall, after counting the votes at a polling unit, enter the votes scored by each candidate in a form to be prescribed by the commission.
“Section 60(5) of the Act makes it mandatory that the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot in a manner prescribed by the commission. Thereafter, the presiding officer shall after recording and announcing the results, deliver the same along with election materials under security and accompanied by the candidates or their polling agents, where available to such person as may be prescribed by the commission.
“The implication of this is that the collation process of results is still essentially manual, but the collation officer must collate subject to his verification and confirmation that the number of accredited voters stated on the collated result are correct and consistent with the number of accredited voters recorded and transmitted directly from polling units”.
He said that while the collation of results would essentially be done manually, where there was a dispute regarding a collated result or the result from any polling unit, the collation or returning officer would use the original of the disputed collated result, accreditation data from the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device and the results transmitted directly from the polling unit to determine the correctness of the result. Nigerians reacted angrily on social media and elsewhere to the statement by Okoye. The heat was such that the electoral body on Sunday issued a statement explaining that it was quoted out of context and insisted that electronic voting and transmission of votes remains sacrosanct. It said in a statement by the same Festus Okoye that it would continue to adopt electronic transmission of results for the 2023 general elections. Okoye said that his comment previously was misinterpreted, insisting that the electronic transmission of results adopted in the recent off-season governorship elections has come to stay.
“We wish to reassure Nigerians that the electronic transmission of results has come to stay. It adds to the credibility and transparency of the process when citizens follow polling unit-level results on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time on Election Day. There will be no change or deviation in subsequent elections. “The entire gamut of result management is provided for in Sections 60, 62 and 64 of the Electoral Act 2022. In line with the provision of the law, the Commission, in April this year, released a detailed clarification of the procedure for transmission, collation and declaration of results, which was shared with all stakeholders and uploaded to our website,” he said.
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