The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has listed the category of Vice Chancellors who would not be involved as Collation and Returning Officers for the 2023 general elections.
Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, gave this information at a meeting with Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities held at the National Universities Commission, Abuja on Thursday, February 9, 2023.
Speaking at the event the INEC boss, among other things, noted that collation of results will take place in 8,809 Registration Areas or Wards, 774 Local Government Areas, 36 States, and the FCT.
He said, in addition, the Commission require Returning Officers for each constituency.
According to Yakubu, put together, INEC will engage 23,258 personnel as Collation and Returning Officers.
He noted that just as in previous elections, the Commission has requested each university for a specified number and category of academic staff as contained in my letter to the Vice Chancellors.
“I must warn that staff who are card-carrying members or have participated in partisan politics should not be nominated,” he said.
He said further: “Similarly, those who may not be involved in partisan politics but are known to have obvious political leanings should not be nominated.
“Furthermore, those who have been convicted of electoral malpractice must be excluded.
“The Commission will carefully scrutinise the list which must be submitted confidentially in the manner prescribed by Commission in my letter to the Vice Chancellors. Like all election duty personnel, each Collation and Returning Officer will swear to an oath of neutrality.”
‘Any BVAS Snatched On Election Day Will Be Deactivated’ – INEC
Ahead of the February 25 and March 11 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, on Wednesday, February 8, 2023, 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 backend so that whoever snatched the device won’t be able to manipulate votes.
“If a BVAS is snatched, we have a system in place that can deactivate that particular BVAS,” said INEC’s deputy director of information and communications technology, Lawrence Bayode on Channels Television’s special election programme, The 2023 Verdict.
“We deactivate it so that whoever snatches the device will not be able to do anything with the device because the device pushes the accreditation data automatically on its own even without the operator pushing a button. When it is idle, it pushes that accreditation data to the backend.”
“They (hoodlums) can’t take over the accreditation process because the device is designed to push the accredited voters to the backend,” he said.
Bayode said if hoodlums take the device to other places where they think they can manipulate the data on the device, the polling unit officer will report the incident.
“If such thing happens, the PO reports and from the backend, that device is deactivated so that the person who took away that device will not be able to do anything with the device,” he said.
Asked what if the polling unit officer is not able to report the hijack immediately, the INEC official said, “Even at that, the person who took the device won’t be able to do anything.”
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
“Whoever genuinely registered and was not able to collect it (PVC), it pains us, but we are assuring them that if they miss this particular election, there are other elections, they will still be able to collect them and vote in the future,” he said.
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.
Though many politicians have expressed hesitation on the use of the BVAS for this year’s elections and headed to court to stop its deployment, INEC has consistently maintained that the device will be used.
The electoral body also said it has enough BVAS devices to conduct elections in the 176,846 polling units nationwide, adding that politicians buying PVCs to manipulate the 2023 general elections are engaging in futile efforts because the BVAS will reject biometric data of persons who are not original owners of the traded PVCs.
Source: Daily Post
