The All Progressives Congress (APC) has expressed concern over the proposed use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the 2023 general elections.
The APC National Chairman, Abdullahi Adamu, raised the concern when he received a delegation from the Commonwealth Election Observation Mission at the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja on Wednesday.
Adamu expressed doubt that the introduction of BVAS and other technology for the transmission of election results in real time would produce a fair and credible outcome in the 2023 elections.
He also raised the issue of BVAS batteries and network coverage in transmitting results to all parts of the country, saying that there is no network available in parts of Abuja.
He said, “First, I was privileged to serve as a senator. Our concern is how ready are we to deploy some of these technologies as regards transmission because we are taking a major step in transmitting election results in real-time.
“To transmit results to all parts of the country, I’m not sure that the network covers it; I know that even in parts of Abuja there is no network, and we have from now until February when in substantial parts of the country there is no electricity.
“INEC must assure us 100 percent that as of when they are due to transmit results, they are ready because they spoke about recharging batteries. But we heard in previous elections when it said it couldn’t recharge.”
This development comes days after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) insisted there was no going back on the deployment of the technology in the 2023 elections.
INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, made this known in a statement published last week Wednesday, titled, ‘A message from the INEC chairman: 100 days to the 2023 general election’.
He reiterated that there was no going back in the commission’s readiness to deploy BVAS and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) in the 2023 general election.
Yakubu said INEC had made steady progress in electoral reform and election administration, adding that Nigerians’ confidence in the electoral process was increasing.
