Catholic church to INEC: Ensure ALL BVAS work in LGAs on election days

The Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria (CSN) says the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must ensure that all the bimodal voter automated systems (BVAS) work perfectly in all the 176,846 polling units on election days

While speaking at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, Mike Umoh, national director of social communications at CSN, said INEC must also ensure efficient transmission of results.

Umoh said this would engender transparency and ensure trust in the electoral process.

“We call on the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to eliminate the obstacles of high transaction costs associated with collecting the PVCs all over the country,” Umoh said.

“In order to guarantee a level field of participation for all voters, INEC has a huge burden to guarantee that BVAS will work on election day in all the 176,846 polling units across the country, as well as the efficient electronic transmission of results from the polling units. This will engender transparency and ensure trust in the electoral process.”

He also urged the commission to investigate allegations of voter register manipulation in different parts of the country.

“We are aware of credible allegations of manipulating the electoral register in different parts of Nigeria. We implore INEC to investigate these allegations diligently and to ensure that to the extent that they are well-founded, anyone implicated is brought to account in a timely fashion.

“Furthermore, it has been discovered that multiple registrations happened alongside willful and incorrect entries of voters’ information; we implore the Commission to ensure that the necessary due diligence is observed in the accurate documentation and cleaning up the voters’ register.”