INEC Reveals What It Will Do If A BVAS Is Snatched On Election Day | READ IN FULL
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has a plan to thwart the schemes of hoodlums who might snatch Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) on the February 25 and March 11, 2023 General election days.
According to the Commission’s Deputy Director of Information and Communications Technology, Lawrence Bayode, INEC has a system which allows it deactivate a stolen BVAS from the backend which will make it impossible for election result to be manipulated using such BVAS.
“If a BVAS is snatched, we have a system in place that can deactivate that particular BVAS”.
“We deactivate it so that whoever snatches the device will not be able to do anything with the device because the device pushes the accreditation data automatically on its own even without the operator pushing a button. When it is idle, it pushes that accreditation data to the backend” Bayode explained on Wednesday, while speaking on Channels Television’s special election programme, “The 2023 Verdict.”
According to the INEC official, if 50 persons were already accredited on a device, and the device is idle, waiting for more voters to come, it will push the 50 already accredited voters to the backend.
“They (hoodlums) can’t take over the accreditation process because the device is designed to push the accredited voters to the backend,” he said.
Bayode said if hoodlums take the device to other places where they think they can manipulate the data on the device, the polling unit officer will report the incident.
“If such thing happens, the PO reports and from the backend, that device is deactivated so that the person who took away that device will not be able to do anything with the device,” he said.
Asked what if the polling unit officer is not able to report the hijack immediately, the INEC official said, “Even at that, the person who took the device won’t be able to do anything.”
