-190,000 machines to be deployed
By Victor Oluwasegun
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has said it will be deploying the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines for the 2023 general elections because it Is more reliable.
The Commission said this on Thursday at the beginning of a 2-day capacity building for journalists and CSOs in North-Central in Abuja, with the theme: ‘conflict sensitive reporting, 2003 general election and counterng fake news’.
Speaking with participants at the training, Dr. Lawrence Bayode, the Deputy Director ICT at INEC, said this is because of inadequacies, inefficiencies, faults and inconsistencies witnessed in the use previous devices in the past elections, particularly the smart card readers.
Besides, he said the issue of compromise coming front the side of people who are involved in the process would be eliminated.
While walking them through the use of the BVAS machine, he said the BVAS is equiped with a Quick Response (QR) code and can use the last name, fingerprint and facials to authenticate a would- be voter.
He said: “A photo of the face is taken and a scanner scans the finger and if any of the two passes you will be allowed to vote, but if they both fail, a voter is denied voting.
“The BVAS can work for 12 straight hours
and has a power bank as backup in case the voting process continues into the night,” he disclosed, adding that the Commission has done everything possible to ensure that hackers are neutralised. “Every attack on data either on surface or backend has been taken care of by INEC.”
He said the BVAS does not need network for effective functioning. But it needs network for configuration and transmission of results, hence the slot for two simcards in the machine.
According to him, “about 170 thousand locations have been identified and satellites have been purchased by the Commission to solve issues of blind spots around the country. ” 190,000 BVAS machines will be deployed”.
Credible, free and fair election is the reason for deploying of technology by INEC he further said, even as he asked the Nigerian public to bear with the Commission on its innovations on elections in the country.
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