The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday revealed that the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) would be deactivated from the backend if thugs snatch the device on Election Day.
Lawrence Bayode, INEC Deputy Director of Information and Communications Technology, stated this on Channels Television’s special election programme, The 2023 Verdict.
He pointed out that there was a system in place to check manipulation of the technology, and that BVAS will be used for the accreditation and authentication of voters across the country in the general election.
“If a BVAS is snatched, we have a system in place that can deactivate that particular BVAS.
“We deactivate it so that whoever snatches the device will not be able to do anything with the device, because the device pushes the accreditation data automatically on its own even without the operator pushing a button.
“When it is idle, it pushes that accreditation data to the backend,” Bayode said.
The INEC official stressed that if hoodlums take the device to other places where they think they can manipulate the data on the device, the polling unit officer will report the incident.
He added that if 50 persons were already accredited on a device, and the device is idle, waiting for more voters to come, it will push the 50 already accredited voters to the backend.
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“They (hoodlums) can’t take over the accreditation process because the device is designed to push the accredited voters to the backend,” he said.
“If such a thing happens, the PO reports and from the backend, that device is deactivated so that the person who took away that device will not be able to do anything with the device,” he said.
He added that even if the polling unit officer is not able to report the hijack immediately, it would still be impossible for the person who took the device to do anything with it.
Similarly, INEC Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Victor Aluko, said those who could not get their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) have to wait till after the election.
“Whoever genuinely registered and was not able to collect it (PVC), it pains us, but we are assuring them that if they miss this particular election, there are other elections, they will still be able to collect them and vote in the future,” he said.
