INEC reacts to allegations of BVAS’ manipulation in Kogi poll
Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has reacted to allegations of manipulation of voters vote on the several Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, used in last Saturday’s governorship election in Kogi State.
Mohammed Kudu Haruna, National Commissioner and member of, the Information and Voter Education Committee of INEC explained in a statement yesterday.
He said INEC’s attention was drawn to some media reports alleging that the commission was tampering with the accredited figures of voters in the Kogi governorship election results uploaded on the INEC Result Viewing, IReV, portal.
Describing the reports as unfounded, Haruna said the most accurate and up-to-date voters’ accreditation data was available in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, which is used for the authentication and accreditation of registered voters at various polling units on election day.
It automatically retains the accreditation data of all voters,” he stated.“According to him, the BVAS is designed to primarily work offline without internet connectivity, which facilitates faster and seamless authentication and accreditation experience for voters.
He added that when its application is active or in use, depending on the strength of its connection to the Internet, the BVAS automatically exports the accreditation data to the Accreditation Backend System, ABS.
This exportation of data does not happen when the device’s application is inactive or when the internet connectivity is poor. The same experience applies to a situation where more than one BVAS gadget is used at a polling unit with more than 1,250 registered voters.
This process, referred to as synchronization, and which is ongoing, could lead to changes in the accreditation figures as more data flows in to update the existing figures as such the public should disregard the information of result manipulation in Kogi.
