Ahead of the 2023 general elections in Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that it has sufficient Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) to conduct elections in the 176,846 polling units nationwide.
Mr. Festus Okoye who is INEC’s National Commissioner made this known on Saturday during a live appearance on Channels TV’s 2022 In Retrospect, an End-Of-Year special which was monitored by Africa Today News, New York.
‘The BVAS, which we said will be the game-changer in relation to this election, is in place. And I want to confirm that we have a sufficient number of BVAS that will be used in the conduct of elections in the 176,846 polling units across this country,’ he said.
The INEC commissioner said over 1.4 million adhoc staff will be trained on the effective usage of the BVAS.
‘We want to train our adhoc staff longer so that we won’t have people not knowing how to use the BVAS and blaming it on technology and so on.’
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‘We are also harvesting the names and details of those that will serve as our adhoc staff. For the two elections, the national and state elections, we are going to engage over 1.4 million adhoc staff and we are going to train them,’ he said.
There have been reports of late that politicians who are against the BVAS attempt to use the court of law to stop INEC from deploying BVAS and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in next year’s elections but the electoral body has consistently restated its commitment and determination to deploy the system for the 2023 general elections.
BVAS is stipulated in the Electoral Act of 2022 and it is a technological system that allows the accreditation of voters through biometrics capturing, uploading of results amongst others.
It has been described by many as an upgrade of the smartcard reader used in the last general elections which achieved some results in the country’s electoral process.
Okoye further stated that the processes and procedures of the commission are going well as planned and Nigerians should expect a very good election in 2023.
‘People of this country should expect that INEC will conduct a very good election. Conducting a very good election in terms of the fact that we started preparations for the 2023 general elections immediately we finished with the 2019 general election.
‘As at today, our processes and procedures are going well as planned.’
Okoye said by December 30, 2022, political parties were supposed to have submitted the names, signatures and personal particulars of their polling agents in relation to national election.
On January 6, 2023, they are supposed to submit the names, the signatures, photographs and particulars of their agents on state elections, he said.
The INEC commissioner also said on January 12, 2023, INEC will release the official list of voters noting that “all these things are going as planned and they are going to be accomplished on schedule”.