By Promise Eze
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it won’t bow to pressure from political parties who want to assume the role of regulators of its activities.
The INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, who said this on Sunday night, explained that the commission had been created to serve as a regulator for political parties and not the other way round.
This comes after the Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, requested for the commission’s permission to witness the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines used in the just concluded presidential election.
Speaking while featuring on Channels TV’s Politics Today, Okoye insisted that the request by the Labour Party to monitor the commission’s process of reconfiguring and backing up results on its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines would not be granted.
“On the issue of a political party saying they want to come and look at our cloud, IReV or into the brain of the BIVAS, the commission will not allow that to happen.
“Every political party that deploys polling agents has a copy of the polling units level results and if a political party now says they want to come into the commission to look at the database containing biometric information of all registered voters, we won’t allow that to happen because the laws do not allow that.
“Look, the commission is the regulator of political parties and the political parties cannot, just because of so many things taking place, come around and wants to regulate the commission. The commission will now allow that to happen,” Okoye said.
He also added that parties and individuals planning to make known their grievances through peaceful protest over the conduct of the February 25, 2023 presidential poll will be welcome at the commission’s headquarters.
