The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Wednesday, raised alarm over plots by some politicians to hack into its server, manufacture the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) so as to use in their favour during the 2023 election.
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BVAS is an electronic device designed to read Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and authenticate voters.
However, INEC’s Head of Department, Voter Education and Publicity, Achumie Chuka Rex while addressing stakeholders at a two-day workshop organised by Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) supported by USAID, disclosed that politicians are working so hard to achieve their aims but that the commission was far ahead of them.
Fielding questions from participants, shortly after delivering a paper titled: “Technology And 2023 Election Commission”, Achumie revealed that INEC is working round the clock to ensure that the integrity of its server is maintained during and after the elections.
He said, “There is no room to hack into INEC sever,” adding that “politicians are doing everything possible to get into INEC server or even to manufacture BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) but unfortunately for them, INEC is three steps ahead of their plots”. Allaying fears of a network problem that would make BVAS work effectively in rural areas, he said that BVAS was built on a dual basis – “online and offline”.
Speaking further during the workshop, Achumie expressed optimism that there will be positive voter turnouts with the introduction of various technologies into the country’s election management.
According to him, Nigerians are gradually bidding farewell to the dark days when the voter register was infested with foreign names and those days when election results were announced while voting was still ongoing.
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He furthered that 22 innovations introduced by the electoral management body, including the IREV and BVAS, have enabled the country to move light years away from its electoral debacle. “Recent revelations by Professor Mahmood Yakubu show that the Commission has conducted 105 elections using the IREV, while it has uploaded 32,985 (99.13%) out of a possible 33,275 results, having recorded 100% upload rate in the just concluded Ekiti and Osun governorship elections. “Apart from voting, results management is easily the most critical aspect of election administration.
While voting is an open and public activity, result management is usually run by a few election officials, mostly outside the glare of the public. Thus, there is a need to promote transparency in this in the best possible way.
“Other innovations that seem to have enhanced the system include biometric voter registration, computer-based registration of voters, online pre-registration, the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) with chips, creating online portals for candidates, observers and political party agents, amongst others, which have all gone a long way in standardising Nigeria’s election management system,” Achumie said.