FACT CHECK: INEC didn’t spend N355bn on BVAS as Dele Momodu claimed

Dele Momodu, publisher of Ovation magazine, claimed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) spent N355 billion on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the 2023 elections.

“Why waste our scarce resources when we can simply change democracy to monarchy,” partly reads the caption of the Instagram post which has 3,325 likes and 793 comments.

“N355 billion for BVAS and 5 persons said it wasn’t necessary to use it? Isn’t that laughable? Oh, what a country?” the post concluded.

Momodu contested in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential primary which held in May 2022.

After losing out in the primaries, the party’s presidential campaign council appointed him as the director of the campaign on strategic communications.

BVAS

The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) is a technological device introduced and deployed by INEC in 2021 to promote credible elections. 

The device accredits voters at the polling unit through biometrics capturing. 

The BVAS also stores voting data, captures images of the result sheet (form EC8A), and is used in uploading photos of the result sheet on the IReV.

OPPOSITION FROWNS AT INEC’S INABILITY TO TRANSMIT PRESIDENTIAL RESULTS ELECTRONICALLY

During the build-up to the election, INEC had said the commission was capable of transmitting all election results electronically.

However, the commission failed to transmit the presidential results electronically, citing technical glitches. The development made citizens disgruntled and led to the opposition challenging Tinubu’s victory.

A month after the election, Festus Okoye, ex-spokesperson for INEC, said it is “wrong” to suggest that taxpayers’ money was wasted due to the “glitch” in uploading the presidential results.

TRIBUNAL JUDGEMENT

On September 6, the tribunal upheld the victory of President Bola Tinubu in the February 25 election.

The tribunal, led by Haruna Tsammani, dismissed the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP), and Allied Peoples Movement (APM), all challenging Tinubu’s victory.

In a unanimous decision, the tribunal held that all petitions were “devoid of merit”.

The tribunal also said INEC can determine its mode of transmitting election results.

The five-man panel added that the electoral act did not mandate the commission to transmit results electronically.

AMOUNT SPENT ON BVAS

In 2021, while defending the budget before the senate committee on appropriation, Mahmud Yakubu, INEC’s chairman, said the commission would spend N305 billion for the 2023 elections.

In 2022, Yakubu further explained that aside from the cost of elections, N50 billion naira was projected for the commission’s 2023 budget, an increment of N10 billion compared to the N40 billion 2022 budget. 

Summing the 2023 budget of N50 billion and the N305 billion earmarked for the general election, the commission’s total budget for 2023 comes to N355 billion.

INEC’s election project planning (EPP) committee said out of the N305 billion budgeted for the elections, the commission projected “N161.9bn for electoral operational and administrative costs, N117.1bn for electoral technology costs; N18.5bn for electoral capital costs”.

Furthermore, the committee said the sum of N7.4 billion was set aside as “contingency for unforeseen electoral expenses’’.

The acquisition of the BVAS machine falls under N117.1 billion for technology costs.

VERDICT

The claim that INEC spent N355 billion on the BVAS machine as claimed by Dele Momodu is false.

N355 billion was the total sum budgeted by INEC for the 2023 election – N305 billion for the election and N50 billion for its annual budget.

Out of the N305 billion budgeted for election, the commission earmarked N117.1 billion for technology. Therefore, only a fraction of N117.1 billion was spent on BVAS.