2023: Should INEC Still Be Talking Of BVAS?

All things being equal, in less than 90 days, the country will file out in the direction of the polling booth to elect a new set of leaders for federal and state offices in the 2023 general election. To ensure that this exercise is carried out hitch-free, a set of rules were clearly spelt out in the Electoral Act of 2022.

A key component of this law is the role technology is expected to play in ensuring that the electorate exercise their franchise without let or hindrance. One aspect of this technology, that is exceeding heart-warming, is the use of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), a new system of voting which was introduced to replace the smart card reader (SCR). Apart from authenticating the permanent voter’s card (PVC), it also authenticates fingerprints and facials of voters. To ensure credibility, BVAS will first authenticate a voter’s PVC. This innovative technology has the capacity to improve and strengthen the voter verification, authentication and accreditation process.

Anambra state governorship election was the first major off-season poll where this technology was tested. Its success, then, recommended it for use in the Ekiti and Osun elections with reasonably acceptable successes and is positioned to be deployed in the forthcoming general election. For most Nigerians, combined with electronic uploading of results, BVAS is the only guarantee of a free and fair election in the country now.

It is, then, no surprise, in the opinion of this newspaper, that election riggers and ballot box snatchers are jittery because BVAS and electronic uploading of results will render their past obnoxious practices that had been the bane of the nation’s democratic effort, useless and impracticable. Some political office holders, who had wasted the nation’s resources through bad governance and who had hoped to perpetuate themselves in office through the old discredited methods, have the temerity to argue that the nation was not ripe for this level of sophistication in election management.

For some of them, they are giving their supporters the cold comfort that the Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) may not be used in the election and even encouraging them to continue to rehearse their evil practices of ballot box snatching. For this set of politically exposed persons, we can only pity their ignorance.

However, what is coming to this newspaper as a surprise is that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has time, in spite of its busy schedule, to join issues with these bunch of carpetbaggers by coming out to re-assert that “no PVC, no voting”. Of course, it has already been stated in the Electoral Act that the only ticket that grants any potential voter access to the polling booth is the PVC. Similarly, the law has made it clear that electronic uploading of results is practicable and possible. So why is INEC over-flogging the issue?