By Leshi Adebayo
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has finalized plans to introduce the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in a bid to eliminate the possibility of voting by identity theft using another person’s Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) during an election.
The INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, disclosed this while addressing media executives on Tuesday in Abuja.
According to him, the INEC Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) will merge the Z-Pad and the Smart Card Reader (SCR)’s functions for BVAS, comprising the fingerprint and facial authentication on election day.
The IVED was unveiled by the Commission on March 17, as a new technologically-driven innovation to facilitate the physical registration aspect of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) among other things.
Yakubu explained that the various concerns duly noted by stakeholders about the voter accreditation process during previous elections influenced the Commission’s decision.
“To address this concern, the Commission attempted to introduce the facial biometric authentication during accreditation of the voters using the Z-Pad tablet to complement the fingerprint process through the Card Reader before the Edo Governorship election in September 2020.
“However, the Commission was not entirely satisfied with the pilot held in the Nasarawa Central State Constituency bye-election a month earlier in August 2020.
“We therefore suspended the idea to enable us to do some more work. Over the last year, we reviewed the situation, and we think we have found the appropriate technology to address it. The Z-pad was, therefore, only used to upload Polling Unit results to the IReV portal during elections,” he said.
The INEC boss stated that the functionality of the Z-pad is already integrated into the IVED, which is being used for voter registration, currently.
He added that the same device (Z-Pad) will be used for the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for fingerprint authentication during accreditation and where it fails for facial authentication on Election day.
“No electronic authentication, no voting. We are convinced that the new machine is robust enough to guarantee further the credibility of voter authentication and transparent management of results during elections,” Yakubu said.
He, however, said INEC would conduct a pilot exercise with the IVED in the Isoko South 1 State Assembly constituency bye-election scheduled for Saturday, September 11.
“The BVAS will now perform the functions of both the SCR and Z-Pad in the bye-election. Thereafter, it will be deployed in the Anambra Governorship election in November.”
