The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Director for Voter Education, Victor Aluko, yesterday, re-echoed the position of the INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, when he said one of the lessons from the Osun State governorship election dispute was that going forward, the commission would now transmit accreditation and election results simultaneously to its INEC Results Viewing Centres (IReV).
Addressing concerns relating to BVAS with respect to the Osun election, Aluko, who spoke on the Arise News Channel, during a programme anchored by Dr. Reuben Abati, said, “The truth is, without prejudice to the legal issues in Osun, BVAS did not fail in Osun. BVAS did what it was supposed to do, to accredit voters.
“But we have learnt our lessons from that and we’ve moved on, and one of the lessons we learnt is that, we must transmit the accreditation details along with the results of the election to our IReV, that is, INEC Results Viewing Centres.
“And of course, during this mock accreditation, we were able to try that. We created a new URL in our IReV and we transmitted the accreditation details along with the results to the IReV portal and this is important. That’s the lesson we have learnt.
“And of course, in the next general election, in all the 176,846 polling units, the BVAS will do what it is supposed to do: accredit voters and then transmit the result to the IReV and of course, while transmitting results simultaneously and accurately, it also transmits the accreditation details.
“So, there’s nothing to worry about. There wouldn’t be any problem with BVAS during the general election, because all that’s to be done, has been done by the commission. We have all the BVAS with us that we are going to use for the general election; we’ve been testing them in-house.
“Yesterday, we were able to test them on the field with actual voters and in all parts of the country – in different terrains – hilly areas and various places we were able to test the BVAS machine, and of course, what I said that, we’ve created a new URL on our IReV and we’ll be able to transmit the accreditation details, simultaneously and accurately along with the results of the election.”
