The National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Tuesday said politicians who engage in buying voters card would only end up disenfranchising the electorate come 2023 general elections.
This is as he stated that with the use of BIVAS, nobody can impersonate another.
Okoye stated this during a one- day capacity building workshop for journalists in the South-east on conflict-sensitive reporting and 2023 general elections.
The workshop was organised by the national body of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) with support from the INEC.
Okoye stated that the commission decided to introduce the use of BIVAs to curtail irregularities experienced during election exercise.
He said: “The commission decided to use BIVAS in replacement of the incident form because of the irregularities experienced with the form. If the BIVAS cannot authenticate your fingers and cannot authenticate your face, it indicates that you are engaged in identity theft.
“Those who are buying up PVCs can only prevent people from going to the polling units to vote but you cannot buy up PVCs and give them to different people to use to vote in the BIVAS in such a way that we didn’t get any issue in some places we used it.
“I completely agree that no technology is foolproof, especially where you introduced a new product of technology in the electoral process. Of course, there may be challenges, but we have upgraded the bias.
“We have organised 105 elections using the BIVAS, but there were no issues. So, we have confidence that the bi as an authentication mechanism has come to stay and there is no going back on the use of the BIVAS for voter accreditation and voter authentication.
“One of the things we are going to do before the election is that we are going to organise what we call mop accreditation in all the states of the federation and all the senatorial zones using the BIVAS before the 2023 general elections. So the BIVAS has come to stay and those who are buying up permanent voters cards, tell them not to come to our polling unit on Election Day.
“In the commission, we don’t recognise anything like small political parties, all the parties have the same incidents of registration and all of them are equal.
“If you look at sections 92 and 93 of the Electoral Act, it makes it very clear where you cannot campaign. The law is very clear that places designated for religious worship shall not be used for political campaigns. Public offices shall not be used for political campaigns, and police stations cannot be used for political campaigns. These are the places that the law says cannot be used for political campaigns. But you know all other places can be used for campaigns.”
