INEC Promises Use Of BVAS In Governorship, State Assembly Elections

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has assured Nigerians that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) will be used in the forthcoming governorship and state legislature elections.

Prof. Mahmood Yakubu gave the assurance on Saturday during a meeting with all Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) at the INEC headquarters in Abuja.

He confirmed that the BVAS machines are being worked on to avoid a repeat of the glitches recorded during the presidential and national assembly elections.

“On Election Day technology, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) will once again be deployed for voter accreditation and result management,” Yakubu said.

“The deployment of BVAS has gone a long way to sanitise voter accreditation as can be seen from the result of recent elections.

“Since last week, the Commission has intensified the review of the technology to ensure that glitches experienced, particularly with the upload of results are rectified. We are confident that going forward the system will run optimally.”

In his welcome remarks, the INEC Chairman noted that the meeting was to review performances at the last week’s elections, adding that there were lessons to be learnt from last week’s elections, especially as it relates to logistics management.

Meanwhile, In last Saturday’s elections, winners have also been declared for 423 national legislative seats while supplementary elections will be held in 46 constituencies. In the Senate, 98 out of 109 seats have been declared. So far, seven political parties have won senatorial seats while in the House of Representatives, 325 out of 360 seats have been won by eight political parties.

In terms of party representation, this is the most diverse national assembly since 1999 as can be seen from the tabular summary below:

Senate House of Reps
APC 57, APGA 1, LP 6, NNPP 2, PDP 29, SDP 2, YPP 1

Party Seats Party Seats
ADC 2, APC 162, APGA 4, LP 34, NNPP 18, PDP 102, SDP 2, YPP 1

He added that Certificates of Return will be presented to Senators-elect on Tuesday 7th March 2023 at 11.00am at the National Collation Centre (the International Conference Centre), Abuja, while Members of the House of Representatives-elect will receive theirs the following day, Wednesday 8th March 2023, at 11.00am at the same venue.

He, however, said that for effective crowd management, each Senator/Member-elect should be accompanied by a maximum of two guests. The comprehensive list of all members-elect will be uploaded to the Commission’s website shortly.