...Express ‘no confidence’ on its capacity to deploy BVAS
Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Aswj Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has expressed no confidence in the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission to deploy the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) for the 2023 election.
Speaking further before a diverse audience during an appearance at frontline UK think-tank, Chatham House in London, yesterday, Tinubu said, INEC is still yet to assure us during this election that electronic transmission, the technology being used for the accreditation and the total votes counts is reliable, dependable and assuring in our democratic process before we introduce a complicated element ofballot.
The APC presidential candidate spoke as part of a strategy to expound on his plans for security, economy and foreign policy in the UK.
Speaking further, Tinubu said hes one of the politicians in Nigeria now losing confidence in the nations voting system with the introduction of the new technology ahead of the polls. We are still losing confidence in our democratic and voting system, he said.
The Aswj’s fresh opposition to the voting technology reinforced the position of the ruling party, which had earlier claimed that Nigeria was not yet ripe for the use of such technology in the 2023 poll.
Recall that INEC had insisted that there was no going back on the deployment of the technology for the 2023 election exercise. The chairman of the electoral body, Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, had said the introduction of BVAS and IRev, a technology to upload election results in real-time, was to ensure a free, fair and credible election.
The former Lagos State governor was at the world-leading policy institute alongside the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila; Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufa’i and his Jigawa State counterpart, Abubakar Badaru; former Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi; amongst others.
