‘Parties have no right to analyse BVAS,’ INEC forecloses inspection of election materials by PDP, LP

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared on Sunday that no political parties have the right to analyse the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS).

The INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, stated this on Channels Television’s programme, Sunday Politics.

The commission deployed two new technologies, the IReV and the BVAS for the accreditation and electronic transmission of election results this year.

However, INEC had come under severe criticism over its refusal to upload the election results from polling units to the IReV as required by Section 60 of the Electoral Act 2022 during last month’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party had last week demanded the resignation of the INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, over alleged irregularities in the election.

The parties rejected the INEC declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as the winner of the election and vowed to challenge the decision in court.

The Court of Appeal, Abuja, last week granted INEC’s request to reset the BVAS for March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.

READ ALSO: APC warns INEC to ensure BVAS data is protected

However, Okoye insisted that no political party would be permitted to examine the BVAS or the voters’ biometrics.

He also declared only the people who went to court were affected by the court’s ruling that voters could cast ballots with their temporary voter cards.

The INEC commissioner blamed political parties for the poor voter turnout in the last elections, saying they made polling places “inaccessible” to voters.

He 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.”

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