Game over for those trying to disrupt the 2023 general elections – INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday warned those planning to snatch the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to perish the thought as it will be an effort in futility.

It said with the automatic data accreditation and the system put in place such BVAS will be deactivated.

INEC’s Deputy Director of Information and Communications Technology, Mr Lawrence Bayode, said they are ahead of any ploy to disrupt or manipulate electoral results.

He spoke while appearing on Channels TV on Wednesday.

“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.

“They (hoodlums) can’t take over the accreditation process because the device is designed to push the accredited voters to the back end,” Bayode said.

Bayode also spoke on the responsibility of the Polling Unit Officer in the event of the BVAS being stolen or taken away to be manipulated: “If such thing happens, the PO reports and from the back end, that device is deactivated so that the person who took away that device will not be able to do anything with the device.”

“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.”

Bayode assured that INEC has enough BVAS device to cover the 176,846 polling units nationwide and urged politicians to desist from buying PVCs.

“The BVAS is designed in such a way that it will reject biometric data of persons who are not the original owners of the traded PVCs”.