BVAS test: We’ll conduct mock voter accreditation, says INEC chair at Chatham House

Mahmood Yakubu, the chairperson of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says the commission will carry out mock accreditation of voters before the general election.

Yakubu said this on Tuesday while speaking at the Chatham House in the United Kingdom.

He said the mock accreditation would be carried out in selected polling units to test the integrity of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS).

“We had issues with the BVAS in Anambra and the federal capital territory (FCT) when we deployed it in November 2021 and February 2022. We went back to the drawing board and we have found the solution,” he said.

“That is why in subsequent elections and Osun, you didn’t see those glitches. But I’m not going to say more about what we discovered and what we have done.

“We have the machines for the general election, but we don’t want to take chances. Each and every BVAS has been tested and confirmed functional. For the last two weeks, our officials were in all the states of the federation testing those machines.

“We’ll conduct mock accreditation exercise nationwide ahead of the election. We’ll test the integrity of these machines with real voters in select polling units. We did so in Ekiti and Osun; it was fantastic.”

The INEC chairperson also said the commission will make provision for additional machines in case of malfunction or glitches.

“We have technical support that will fix the machines in the unlikely event of any glitches,” he said.

“However, where it fails to function completely in a polling unit — from previous experience there were isolated polling units — the law has a remedy that the commission should re-mobilise and re-conduct elections in the affected polling units within 24 hours. So, we are really, really comfortable where we are.”