The Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, in Plateau State, Oliver Tersoo Agundu has expressed readiness for the Governorship and Stata House of assembly elections taking place on Saturday 18th March 2023.

Speaking to Voice of Nigeria’s Correspondents in Plateau state, North-Central Nigeria, Mr Agundu said that the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC in the state was able to configure and have the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS machines ready and distributed to the local governments.

He also said that malfunctioning and damaged machines were replaced adding that INEC conducted refresher training for ad-hoc staff to avoid a repeat of some lapses as regards mastery of the machines during the presidential election

On security issues during the elections, the REC said that it was agreed with the security outfits involved to step up election security.

Speaking on the function of the BVAS and the Result Viewing Portal, IReV, Mr. Agundu said “The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, it is purely for accreditation. The only thing that BVAS has to do with the election is to determine how many people registered. Then at the end of the election, BVAS is expected to be used to snap. It is not even used to input figures.

“It is after the results have been collected, endorsed by the presiding officer and the agents of political parties, the first sheet, that is the original sheet will be snapped. That is what we call Form EC8A will be snapped and uploaded. So whether they tamper with it, you’ll see the raw figure and that is just for backup.”

Mr Agundu said that INEC was overwhelmed by the level of ignorance exhibited by the populace towards the functions of the BVAS or IReV after the presidential and National Assembly elections.

Source: Voice of Nigeria