The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has said it will not reverse its decision to use Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) for the 2023 general elections.
According to a statement on Wednesday, the INEC chairman, Mahmud Yakubu, 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.
There are exactly 100 days until the Presidential and National Assembly elections scheduled for 25 February. The Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections will hold two weeks later on 11 March.
There were alleged moves recently by some political actors to prevail on INEC to drop BVAS and return to the use of incident forms in the accreditation of voters in the coming elections.
The use of the incident forms was stopped following the introduction of the BVAS machine.
But Mr Yakubu said the decision to use the device and IReV has come to stay.
“As I have said repeatedly, the Commission’s allegiance is to Nigeria. Our loyalty is to Nigerians who want free, fair, credible and verifiable elections supported by technology, which guarantees transparent accreditation and upload of polling unit results for citizens to view in real-time on Election Day.
“It is for these reasons that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) were introduced. There is no going back on the deployment of BVAS and IReV for the 2023 General Election,” Mr Yakubu said.