Prof Attahiru Jega, former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has urged the electoral umpire to defy politicians who oppose the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Registration System (BVAS) for the 2023 elections.
Jega, who appeared on Channels Television on Wednesday, said politicians’ desperation grows as Nigeria approaches election season.
“I think what is most important is the capacity of the election management body to resist that pressure and having recognised that using technology will add more value to the election, they should just remain focused,” Jega said.
He urged INEC not to “allow the parties to prevent them from using the BVAS or electronic transmission of results now that they have legal backing.”
There have recently been reports that politicians opposed to BVAS are attempting to use the courts to prevent INEC from deploying the system in next year’s elections, but the electoral body has consistently reiterated its commitment and determination to deploy the system in the 2023 general elections.
BVAS is a technological system that allows for voter accreditation through biometrics capture and uploading of results, among other things, as specified in the Electoral Act of 2022.
Many have described it as an improvement on the smartcard reader used in the previous general elections, which produced some results in the country’s electoral process.
On Wednesday, the Coalition of United Political Parties (CUPP), a coalition of Nigerian opposition political parties, claimed, among other things, that there are alleged plots to halt electronic transmission of the 2023 election results and deactivate the BVAS from INEC’s server.
Commenting on CUPP’s claims, Jega said, “While I am not lending any credibility to what has been alleged, frankly from my own experience, we saw how close to the election, some politician became afraid that using the card reader was going to stop rigging the election using their own methods, so they came out and at a point even started demanding publicly for me to either resign or go on what they called terminal leave so that I didn’t have to supervise the conduct of the 2015 general elections.”
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