THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has assured Nigerians that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) will not be compromised during the 2023 general elections.
Deputy Director of ICT at INEC Lawrence Bayode gave the assurance on Wednesday while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme.
Bayode said the electoral commission had taken care of every external attack that might be targeted at the BVAS.
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“I want to say again that we have done everything to ensure that the BVAS is not compromised. The data on the BVAS will be secured.
“After the poll, when the data is transmitted to our backend server, the data in transit will be secured and by the time the data gets to our backend server, the data will also be secured there.
“We have looked at the machine and we looked at a lot of things. As I said earlier, you cannot build such a system and you won’t fortify the system to solidify it,” Bayode said.
He added that though people will try a lot to beat the system, they will not succeed.
“I can say categorically that we have taken care of every surface attack vulnerability on this system, and we have also tried our best to ensure that the system cannot be hacked into on election day. And I can say again that BVAS cannot be compromised.
“When fingerprints fail, it turns to the face, and when both fail, you can’t vote,” he added.
BVAS is an electronic device introduced by INEC in 2021. It is designed to read Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and authenticate voters – using their fingerprints – to prove that they qualify to vote at a particular polling unit.
The device works by scanning the barcode/QR code on the PVC/Voters’ register, entering the last six digits of the Voter’s Identity Number, or typing in the voter’s last name by the Assistant Presiding Officer to verify and authenticate the voter.
According to INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, the device was intended to achieve two objectives.
First is verifying the genuineness of the PVCs and the fingerprint or facial authentication of voters during accreditation, and second, replacing the Z-pad for uploading the polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on election day.
A reporter with the ICIR
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