The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Wednesday alleged that politicians have been making efforts to manufacture the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines to enable them hack into the commission’s server during the general elections in 2023.
Achumie Rex, its Head of Voter Education and Publicity Department, made the allegation in Abuja on Wednesday at a two-day workshop on voter education for civil society organisations organised by the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) and supported by the USAID.
He said this had even rekindled INEC’s resolve to make the 2023 general elections free and fair, stressing that there would be simultaneous accreditation and voting on election days.
Rex said that INEC was working round the clock to ensure that the integrity of its server was maintained during and after the elections.
“There is no room to hack into INEC server,” he said, adding that “politicians are doing everything possible to get into the INEC server or even to manufacture BVAS, but unfortunately for them, INEC is three steps ahead of their plots.”
He assured that the BVAS would work effectively at the rural areas as they were built to function on-line and off-line.
Rex said Nigerians were gradually bidding farewell to the dark days when the voter register was infested with foreign names and those days when election results were announced while voting was still ongoing.
Auwal Musa, the Chairman of TMG, who was represented by Miriam Menkiti, said the workshop was part of its one-year project tagged: ‘Strengthening Civic Advocacy and Local Engagement (SCALE) project’.
He said that the aim of the workshop was to achieve the desired outcome in improving quality of elections in Nigeria by ensuring that citizens were adequately and effectively mobilised and sensitised to actively participate in elections. (GBN)
