Politics

BVAS: INEC to review observers reports on Anambra election, present CoR to Soludo

Tunde Opalana, Abuja

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at a meeting in Abuja on Thursday resolved to review reports from accredited observers and the media and respond to identified challenges encountered during the Anambra governorship election.

The commission also will present Certificate of Return to the winner of the poll, Prof Chukwuma Soludo and his running mate today at its state office in Akwa, the Anambra State capital.

Barrister Festus Okoye, National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee said officials at the meeting
conducted an initial review of the election while awaiting the reports of all officials deployed for the election for an indepth review of the processes.

The commission, however appreciated the functionality of its newly introduced accreditation device, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).

Okoye in a statement after the meeting said “the system performed two functions on election day. First is the accreditation of voters using both the fingerprint and facial authentication.

Secondly, it snaps the polling unit level result sheets and uploads them in real-time to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.

“This aspect of the BVAS functionality performed optimally such that by the early hours of Sunday morning, results from 4,987 (88.5%) out of 5,634 polling units had been uploaded for public view.

While still in the field, our ICT team responded to the identified glitches in the accreditation of voters and corrected them.

“Consequently, in the Ihiala supplementary election, there were no reported incidents of BVAS malfunction”.

However, he said “the Commission remains convinced that despite some glitches experienced in Anambra State Governorship election, the deployment of technology in elections is better than the best manual process.

Okoye recalled that the 2021 Anambra State Governorship election was conducted under the most challenging circumstances.

He said “never before did the Commission have to grapple with numerous issues ahead of an off-season Governorship election, including attacks on our facilities, withdrawals of critical service providers such as the ad hoc staff and transporters on the eve of the election and the general tension pervading the atmosphere.. Happily, the election passed off peacefully”.

The Commission expressed its gratitude to the security agencies, election duty officials, political parties and candidates, the National Peace Committee under the leadership of our former Head of State, His Excellency, General Abdulsalami Abubakar GCFR, religious and community leaders, socio-cultural associations, civil society organisations and the media for the enormous sacrifice and support in ensuring that the election was conducted and peacefully concluded.

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Ihesiulo Grace

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