From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised to deploy an improved technology, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in future elections despite President Muhammadu Buhari refusing to assent the bill.
Commission’s chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, made the promise in his remarks during the meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) in Abuja on Wednesday.
He used the opportunity to thank his staff, the security agencies, the media and the electorate for what he described as free and fair governorship elections in Anambra State last month.
“It is now over seven weeks since the conclusion of the Anambra governorship election. Despite the challenging security situation in the State, the Commission was resolute in our determination to proceed with what many believed was going to be an impossible election to conduct.
“Happily, the election passed off peacefully and the outcome adjudged to be free, fair, transparent and credible. Let me therefore thank the staff of the Commission as well as the National and Resident Electoral Commissioners who were deployed to supervise different aspects of the elections.
“Let me similarly thank the security agencies for working cooperatively and professionally with the Commission to secure the environment for the peaceful conduct of the election. Our appreciation also goes to all the stakeholders from political parties and candidates; civil society organisations that deployed thousands of observers across the State despite the security challenges.
“I thank the media for the extensive coverage of the election; the religious, traditional and socio-cultural associations for working for a peace during the election; and the National Peace Committee for bringing parties and candidates to commit to peace before, during and after the election.
“Above all, the Commission appreciates the voters in Anambra State for their resilience and orderly conduct. As you are aware, the Commission piloted two important technological innovations in the Anambra State governorship election,” he said.
On the determination of the Commission to deploy more technology in future elections, Prof Mahmood said: “The BVAS was deployed for the first time in a major election after the successful pilot in the Isoko South I State Constituency in Delta State in September this year.
“The BVAS has replaced the Smart Card Reader for verification and authentication as part of our improved voter accreditation process. The new technology was designed in-house by INEC engineers. Like every new technology, glitches were observed and important lessons learnt. We wish to assure Nigerians that the Commission has reviewed the performance of the BVAS in Anambra State and there will be a tremendous improvement leading to optimal performance in future elections.
“The BVAS has come to stay. So too is the uploading of Polling Unit results on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time on Election Day. We are convinced that the introduction of technology in voter accreditation and result management is better than the best entirely manual process. It also increases public confidence in the process. We will continue to deepen the use of technology in our elections
“The second technological innovation introduced in the Anambra governorship election went virtually unnoticed by many Nigerians. For sometime now, dedicated portals were created by Commission to handle different aspect of the electoral process.
“For instance, the nomination of candidates by political parties, including the uploading of nomination forms, is now done online. So too is the accreditation of election observers and the media. In addition, and for the first time in the history of the Commission, the accreditation of polling and collation agents nominated by political parties was done online.
“This has ensured that all such agents were provided with identification tags bearing not only their party logos, names and other personal details but personal photographs as well. In all, the Commission issued 63,745 identification tags to agents of the 18 political parties that sponsored candidates for the election.
“This has sanitized the process and made the identification of ghost party agents easier. We will maintain the same arrangement for all forthcoming elections, including the 2023 General Election,” he insisted.
On the purpose of the meeting, the INEC boss said: “It is a great pleasure to welcome all our Resident Electoral Commissioners to this meeting which is going to be the last for the year 2021 and the first since the Anambra governorship election held last month. We will therefore review the Anambra governorship election, discuss the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), preparations for forthcoming elections and other related matters.”