Victor EzejaChairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, has once again declared that the Commission is ready to conduct the 2023 general elections.
Prof. Yakubu stated this on Tuesday during his appearance at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London where he spoke on ‘Nigeria’s 2023 Elections: Preparations and Priorities for Electoral Integrity and Inclusion.’
He stated that despite threats of insecurity and attacks on the Commission’s offices nationwide, it remains undaunted in preparation and is not considering postponement of the presidential poll.
The elections which are scheduled to hold on February 25 (presidential and National Assembly) and March 11, 2023 (governorship and State Assembly).
Affirming the readiness of the electoral body to conduct next month’s election, Yakubu said: “We are leaving no stone unturned in our preparations. Our commitment remains only to Nigerians and not to any political party or candidate. That is what the law requires of us. We cherish the institutional independence and integrity of the Commission.”
The INEC Chairman also disclosed that the Commission will soon conduct mock accreditation nationwide to test the functionality and integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BIVAS) before the main elections.
He said this is despite the fact that the machines have been tested across the 774 local government areas with impressive results of their functionality.
“We have the machines for the 2023 elections but we didn’t want to take chances. Each and every machine has been tested and confirmed functional. For the last two weeks, our officials were in the 36 states of the federation testing these machines, and the functionality is simply encouraging.
“The second thing we’re going to do, and pretty soon, is to conduct mock accreditation exercise nationwide, ahead of the elections. We won’t wait until the main elections come. We will test the integrity of these machines with real life voters in selected polling units across the country.
“We did so in Ekiti and Osun. It was fantastic and we’re going to do so nationwide. Increasingly, our people are becoming more excited about the deployment of this technology and we’re really happy.”
He assured that the Commission has also made provision for additional devices in case of glitches or malfunction, coupled with technical support from IReV to fix the problems.
“Also, in terms of the numbers of these BVAS machines, we always make provision in case of malfunction or glitches. There is always a back up. We have IReV technical support that will fix the machines in the unlikely event of any glitches.
“However, where it fails to function completely in a polling unit, from previous experience, there were isolated polling units, the law has a remedy that the Commission should re-mobilise and re-conduct elections in the affected polling units within 24 hours, so we are really, really comfortable where we are,” the INEC Chairman stated.
He assured of the Commission’s independence and continued commitment to following the electoral guidelines and the Electoral Act generally.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
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