In preparation for the 2023 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) disclosed that it would conduct mock accreditation exercises at selected polling units across the country to test the integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). This was made known on Tuesday during a media interaction at the Chatham House, London by the Commission’s Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.
The INEC Chairman said, “We have the machines for the 2023 elections but we didn’t want to take chances. Each and every machine has been tested and confirmed functional. For the last 2 weeks, our officials were in the 36 states of the Federation testing these machines and the functionality is simply encouraging.
“The second thing we’re going to do and pretty soon is to conduct mock accreditation exercise nationwide ahead of the elections. We won’t wait until the main elections come, we will test the integrity of these machines with real-life voters in selected polling units across the country.
“We did so in Ekiti and Osun, it was fantastic and we’re going to do so nationwide. Increasingly our people are becoming more excited about the deployment of this technology and we’re really happy.
“Also in terms of the numbers of these BVAS machines, we always make provision in case of malfunction or glitches. There is always a backup. We have IReV technical support that will fix the machines in the unlikely event of any glitches.”
According to him, in the event of a BVAS malfunction, the law permits INEC to “re-mobilize and re-conduct elections in the affected polling units within 24 hours.”
