Achumie Rex, the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Head of Department, Voter Education and Publicity, claimed on Wednesday that some politicians were making desperate efforts to manufacture the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine and hack into the commission’s server ahead of the 2023 general election.
This came as he repeated the electoral umpire’s commitment to making the 2023 general election free and fair, saying that simultaneous accreditation and voting would take place on election days.
Rex stated this at a two-day session on voter education for civil society organizations organized by the Transition Monitoring Group and funded by USAID.
Responding to participant queries shortly after giving a paper titled “Technology and the 2023 Election Commission,” Rex disclosed that INEC was working around the clock to ensure the integrity of its server during and after the elections.
“There is no room to hack into the INEC computer,” he claimed, adding that “politicians are doing everything possible to get into the INEC server or even to produce BVAS, but sadly for them, INEC is three steps ahead of their plans.”
He stated that BVAS was created on a dual foundation — “online and offline,” assuaging concerns about network issues that might prevent it from working properly in rural locations.
Rex commented as he handed in his paper,
“At the moment, Nigerians are progressively bidding farewell to the dark days when the voter register was contaminated with foreign names and those days when election results were announced while voting was still happening. […]the 22 innovations implemented by the electoral administration authority, notably the IReV and BVAS, have allowed the country to move light years away from its electoral disaster.”
