INEC Restates Faith In BVAS

Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has reiterated the Commission’s faith in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). But vowed to tackle all the observed challenges associated with its field performance on election day. Speaking at the Commission’s meeting with Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) on Tuesday in Abuja, Prof. Yakubu said the Commission remained convinced that the deployment of technology in elections safeguards the integrity of the ballot and provides a better guarantee for electoral credibility than the best manual process. He recalled that when the BVAS was introduced in June 2021, it was intended to achieve two objectives. The first, he said, was the verification of the genuineness of the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) and the fingerprint/ facial authentication. The second objective, he averred, was to replace the Z-pad for uploading the polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real time on election day. “So far,” he said, “the BVAS has performed optimally in verifying the authenticity of PVCs and uploading images of polling unit results to the IReV.”