The Independent National Electoral Commission announced that it would use a total of 176,846 Bimodal Voter Accreditation Systems for the general elections in February 2023.
This was purportedly disclosed by Festus Okoye, the INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, on Monday at the Hubert Humphrey Fellowship Alumni Association Annual Seminar 2022 in Abuja.
He further stated that 17,618 BVAS computers, two of which would be placed in each registration area, would be made available by the commission as backup.
Okoye added that INEC is committed to holding a free and fair election in 2023 and that the commission will strengthen its data recovery facilities and improve all of its platforms prior to the elections in order to fend off the platform’s ongoing hacker and political actor attacks.
He said, “The commission is firm and fixed on its resolve to conduct free, fair, transparent and inclusive elections.
“The commission will continue to be open and transparent in its technological innovations because election business is public business and the public has a right to know what the commission is doing.
“INEC will continue to gradually infuse technology in the electoral process to enhance transparency and verifiability in voter authentication and result management. The level of technological development in the country and the state of infrastructure will invariably impact on the technology the commission can deploy.
“In this regard, the commission will continue to make haste slowly as accuracy in result management is more important than the speed at which technology is introduced.
“We are confident that the BVAS and IReV will form an important pillar and component in the march towards an electoral process driven by technology to obviate malicious human interference in the electoral process,” he added.
