BVAS configuration will be completed Tuesday, says INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the configuration of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) would be completed by Tuesday in preparation for the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.

Over the past few days, controversy has rocked Major opposition parties over the electoral body’s plan to reconfigure the BVAS machines ahead of the governorship and house of assembly elections.

Recall that The Independent National Electoral Commission had postponed the governorship and state Houses of Assembly elections scheduled to hold on March 11 to March 18 in order to be able to reconfigure the BVAS.

Last Wednesday, the presidential election petition tribunal refused to restrain INEC from reconfiguring the machines.

Moments after the court verdict, the electoral commission postponed the governorship and state assembly elections by one week in order to have adequate time to reconfigure the BVAS.

Speaking on Sunday in an interview on Channels Television, Festus Okoye, INEC national commissioner, said no BVAS machine will be reconfigured without the data being uploaded to the “accreditation backend”.

The INEC spokesperson said the commission has learnt lessons on the challenges of the BVAS machines during the presidential elections.

“As at the last time I checked, over 170,000 of those results have been uploaded,” Okoye said.

“As you are aware, we are reconfiguring the BVAS for purposes of the governorship and state assembly elections, and any BVAS that was used for the presidential and national assembly elections that do not push to the accreditation backend, the data relating to the conduct of the presidential and national assembly elections will not be reconfigured.

“In fact, the BVAS will not allow itself to be reconfigured or reset if the entire data is not pushed to the accreditation backend.

“I’m sure that by Tuesday when we hope to complete the resettling of the BVAS for the purposes of the governorship and state assembly elections, the results in all the places where elections were conducted would have been pushed to the accreditation backend.”