Hoodlums Snatch BVAS On Election Day – INEC

Ahead of the February 25 and March 11 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday revealed the action to be taken if hoodlums snatch the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) on election day.

According to the electoral body, the BVAS, the technology that will be used for the accreditation and authentication of voters come 2023, will be deactivated from the back end so that whoever snatched the device won’t be able to manipulate votes.

With its return to democracy in 1999, past elections in Nigeria have been marred by ballot-box snatching in some polling units as hoodlums and gunmen overwhelm police officers and other security agents to disrupt the voting process.

However, the electoral body expressed confidence in the ability of security agents to secure sensitive and non-sensitive materials at the polling units. The electoral umpire, however, said should snatching of BVAS occur, hoodlums won’t be able to achieve anything with it.

According to the INEC official, 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.

Similarly, INEC Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Victor Aluko said the window for the collection of Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) have closed till after the 2023 general elections.

He said INEC won’t take uncollected PVCs to polling units on election day because that will be a distraction for the polling unit officers

The BVAS and INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) are stipulated in the Electoral Act 2022 and it is a technological system that allows the accreditation of voters through biometrics capturing, uploading of results amongst others. It has been described by many as an upgrade of the smartcard reader used in the last general elections which achieved some results in the country’s electoral process.