Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has allayed fears of Nigerian voters ahead of the 2023 general election by saying the Commission has identified challenges associated with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
He assured that INEC will continue to improve upon the voter’s accreditation device in forthcoming bye-elections as well as the Ekiti and Osun governorship polls.
Yakubu gave the assurance of perfecting BVAS while speaking at the opening ceremony of a retreat for National Commissioners in Lagos on Monday.
Assuring Nigerians, he said “may I also seize this opportunity to reassure Nigerians that we have identified the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) challenges during voter accreditation.
“In the recent bye-elections in six constituencies in four States of the Federation across four geo-political zones, the BVAS functioned optimally in rural, suburban, and urban areas of Cross River, Imo, Ondo, and Plateau States. We received no complaints from voters and no reports of glitches from observers in these bye-elections.”
He said, “we will continue to perfect the system in the forthcoming bye-elections and the end of tenure Governorship elections in Ekiti State on 18th June 2022 and Osun State on 16th July 2022.”
Yakubu added that the Commission is working on the distribution of voters cards to polling units across the country following the successful expansion of voter access to polling units.
He noted that INEC will roll out the plan for achieving a more balanced distribution of voters to the polling units.
“As always, we will engage with stakeholders across the board to ensure a more participatory approach so that the exercise is seamless and voters will have a more pleasant experience at polling units on Election Day,” he said.
The chairman commended Nigerians for prompt response to the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, he said it is encouraging.
Yakubu said the Commission recently devolved the physical registration beyond its state and local government offices nationwide.
“Millions of Nigerians have registered so far and we have been giving Weekly updates of the progress of the exercise for the last nine months. The Commission is aware that new registrants as well as those who applied for transfer or replacement of the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) would like to know when the cards will be available for collection.
“The reason why we have not made the PVCs available is because of the robust system of cleaning up the registration to ensure that only genuine registrants are added to the voters register using the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) for fingerprint and facial clean up. I am glad to report that the Commission has completed the ABIS for the first and second quarter of the CVR,” he added.
The Commission, he disclosed, is meeting next week and the detailed dates and locations for the collection of PVCs will be announced The Trumpet gathered.
For the retreat, seven resource persons which cut across several areas of theory and practice of democracy, election management, law, human rights, criminal justice reform, electoral reform, election observation, and capacity-building for election managers were drawn.
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My third responsibility is to reassure Nigerians of our commitment to credible polls in 2023. The Commission has concluded work on the Strategic Plan 2022-2026 and Election Project Plan for the 2023 General Election. Very soon, we will finalize work on the Regulations and Guidelines for elections taking into consideration the provisions of the Electoral Act 2022. The three documents will be published and presented to the public next month i.e. April 2022.
