INEC insists on electronic accreditation

Nigeria’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday insisted on electronic accreditation of voters in the country.

The Commission’s chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu declared this during a consultative meeting with civil society groups in Abuja.

“The new mantra is that no electronic accreditation, no voting”.

He disclosed that INEC  will commence the use of a new electronic accreditation in the forthcoming elections in Delta and Anambra states.

“The new voter accreditation machine called Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) will be used in place of Smart Card Readers which were used in previous elections.

“For sometimes, many stakeholders including civil society organisations have called on the Commission to strengthen the voter accreditation process during elections especially with reference to the use of the incident form while the smart card reader fails to authenticate the fingerprint of voters,” he said.

While explaining the reason behind the change, the electoral body submitted, “Over the last one year, we have reviewed the situation and we think we have found the appropriate technology to address it. The functionality of the ZPAD has now been integrated into IVED, that is, INEC Voter Enrolment Device currently used for voter registration.

“On election day, the same device will become the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System – BVAS to be used first for fingerprint identification during accreditation and for facial identification.”

The commission will be conducting a bye-election for Isoko-South Federal Constituency in Delta State on Saturday, September 11, 2021, and follow that up with the Anambra governorship election in November.

The civil society groups at the meeting lauded the commission for the progress made in the use of technology in conducting elections. They hope that the latest innovation will further improve the voting process.