Ahead of this year’s general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it will conduct a nationwide mock accreditation to strengthen the technologies that would be deployed for the elections.
The INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, said this on Tuesday at The Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, London, United Kingdom.
Yakubu who spoke on, ‘Nigeria’s 2023 Elections: Preparations and Priorities for Electoral Integrity and Inclusion’ also responded to questions with regard to the commission’s plans for the conduct of this year’s general elections.
He said the mock accreditation would be carried out across selected polling units (PUs) to ascertain the integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), before the main elections, less than 40 days away.
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The INEC boss, however, said every BVAS machine deployed across the 774 local governments had been tested, assuring that the functionality of the machines was impressive.
He added that back-up BVAS machines have been readily provided in case of system glitches.
“We have the machines for the 2023 elections but we didn’t want to take chances. Each and every machine has been tested and confirmed functional. For the last two weeks, our officials were in the 36 states of the federation testing these machines, and the functionality is simply encouraging.
“The second thing we are going to do, and pretty soon, is to conduct a mock accreditation exercise nationwide ahead of the elections. We won’t wait until the main elections come. We will test the integrity of these machines with real life voters in selected polling units across the country.
“We did so in Ekiti and Osun; it was fantastic and we’re going to do so nationwide,” Yakubu said.
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