THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has ran a mock exercise with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in Ekiti ahead of next month’s governorship election in the state.
INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this to newsmen in Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti State on Monday.
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The exercise, according to Yakubu, was to test the functionality of the machines in selected local governments before the election.
“We said we are going to do a mock-test in a few local government areas to further test the functionality of the machines before the election,” Yakubu said. “And so far, so good with the mock.
“We have visited one of the polling centres in Ado; we are here in Ikere. From there we go to Irepodun/Ifelodun local government for the same reason.”
The INEC chairman said he was impressed with the performance of the machines in some of the local councils where they were tested.
He also pledged that the electoral umpire would be neutral and discharge its responsibilities without bias to ensure that the governorship elections were transparent, free and credible.
He said non-sensitive materials had already been distributed to the 16 council areas as he urged the people of Ekiti State to give INEC all the necessary support to ensure a hitch-free election.
“The purpose of our visit to Ekiti State is to see practically what the state office has done, conduct mock voters accreditation and engage stakeholders in the electoral process to primarily ensure the election is conducted seamlessly without any hitch,” he added.
BVAS is a device that combines fingerprint and facial recognition for the verification of voters. It replaced the Smart Card Readers used in previous elections.
There were several reported cases of the malfunction of the BVAS in many polling units when they were deployed in the Anambra governorship and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) elections.
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