…Say BVAS can’t recognize impersonators
By Boniface Okoro, Umuahia
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has allayed fears in many quarters that politicians buying up Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and harvesting the Voter Identification Numbers (VIN) on such PVCs would use them to rig the 2023 general elections.
Officials of INEC who volunteered their opinions on the vexed issue maintained that buying or cloning of PVCs and harvesting their VIN was an exercise in futility because no person, other than the original owner of a PVC, would use it to cast vote in the 2023 elections.
According to them, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), which would be deployed during the election, has inbuilt features that recognize the face and fingerprint of a registered voter, adding that the BVAS does not recognize any impersonator, except the original owner of the PVC.
They said that going by the 2022 Electoral Law, if a voter is not recognized by the BVAS, such a person cannot cast his or her ballot.
The INEC officials were resource persons during the just concluded two-day capacity building for Journalists and Civil Society Organisation in the South East on “Conflict Sensitive Reporting, 2023 General elections and Countering Fake News” held in Enugu, the Enugu State capital.
Deputy Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Mr. Chukuemeka Ugboaja, was optimistic that those whose interest would be to manipulate the 2023 general elections would be disappointed as a result of many innovations and improvements INEC would apply during next year’s polling.
“INEC has murdered rigging in Nigeria,” Ugboaja said, adding, “Cloning of PVC is not possible because the BVAS has a lot of features that identifies only the original owner of a PVC. They clone the PVC and give it to those they have bought over. Even if you succeed and clone a PVC, BVAS will only show the information of the original owner and if you are not that original owner, there is no way you can vote with the PVC.”
He said those who may be planning either to hijack or destroy the BVAS machine would equally be on a futile mission because INEC now has many ways to retrieve information stored in the BVAS.
Also discussing the features and functions of the BVAS, the Information, Communication and Technology Officer of INEC in Enugu State, John Okpi, said politicians buying PVCs were just wasting their resources.
“Only God knows what they are collecting the VIN for. If it is for the purpose of rigging the election, it is not going to work,” Okpi said, adding, “we are not doing electronic voting and BVAS can’t be manipulated or hacked.”
According to him, the BVAS performs three functions: identifying, verifying and authenticating a voter, explaining that a person could only cast his vote when he or she must have satisfied these three conditions and would then be given a ballot paper to go and vote.
The BVAS stores the number of accredited voters on election day and is used for uploading of results into INEC iREV, Okpi said, emphasising that if the number of votes exceed that of accredited voters, the election would be cancelled and a new one conducted.
“BVAS will eliminate multiple voting and over voting. When the numbers of votes cast is more than the number accredited, the election will be cancelled,” he said
In his contribution, A senior Programme Officer of the Centre For Democracy and Development (CDD), organizers of the training, in conjunction with INEC and the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr Austine Aigbe, noted that authentication during accreditation was by physical appearance, using the face or fingerprint.
He said that no two persons have the same fingerprint or facial features which makes it imperative that the BVAS would only recognize the only person whose details were captured during the voter registration exercise.
Aigbe called on the media to embark on massive education of the citizens to enable them to understand and be part of the electoral process.
He said this would lead to creating what he called “Citizens Observers,” those who could actually follow up on the processes of voting and announcement of results on election days, and by so doing, would not give any chance for any form of electoral malpractices.