Off-cycle polls: Bypass of BVAS undermining credibility of elections, says CSO

The Alliance for Deepening Democracy (A4DD), a civil society organisation (CSO), says the bypass of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) undermines the credibility of the country’s elections.

During the off-cycle elections that were held on Saturday in Kogi, Imo, and Bayelsa states, election results from several polling units were cancelled by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for bypassing the BVAS to accredit voters.

Addressing a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, Faith Waziri, spokesperson of A4DD, said the incidents beg the question of the level of preparedness of INEC and security agencies to ensure peaceful, free, fair and credible elections.

Waziri said it is ridiculous that forms EC8A were uploaded through the BVAS for polling units where elections did not hold in some areas of Imo.

“The issues of bypassing the BVAS in this off-cycle election further raises the question of INEC’s commitment and preparedness to ensure a credible and transparent process,” she said.

“This takes our electoral process backwards and undermines the credibility of the process as the BVAS was primarily introduced to ensure a tangible means of verifying that those who voted were indeed registered voters in the polling units and are accredited to cast their votes.

“Ahead of the election, electoral stakeholders trained and deployed staff to the three states.

“While INEC deployed over 46,000 regular and ad-hoc staff, Security agencies announced that 92,000 security personnel, comprising the Police (with a breakdown of 27,000 officers in Bayelsa; 25,565 officers in Imo; and 40,000 officers in Kogi), NSDC, and the Army, were deployed for the off-cycle.

“The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) announced that it deployed over 1,000 men to the states for the election.

“While this number was commendable and adequate for the peaceful conduct of the elections, we observed that most polling units had just one security agent at the polling unit and in other cases, the security agencies stood aloof while political thugs and hirelings desecrated the sanctity of our democracy by disrupting the election process and preventing voters from exercising their constitutional right.”

Waziri said INEC did not use the off-cycle elections to rectify its shortcomings from the events of the 2023 general election.