– Says 360,794 PVC not collected
By Shina Abubakar, Osogbo
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has disclosed that the Biometric Voters Accreditation System machine is still a vital tool for Voters’ accreditation during elections.
This is as the Osun State Resident Electoral Commissioner stated that 360,794 Permanent Voter’s Card are still yet to be collected in the state.
Speaking with newsmen on Wednesday in Osogbo, Osun State capital, the REC, Dr Mutiu Agboke said Nigerians should not believe insinuations that the Supreme Court has in its judgement after the 2023 Presidential election relegated BVAS to the back in elections.
“The Supreme Court in its judgement did not overrule the application of the usage of BVAS, it only emphasised the fundamental of Voters’ register to anything that INEC wants to do. The commission has the power to deploy technology to deepen the process. Therefore, we can come up in 2027 with any kind of technology because we have the basis for it, which is the law”, he said.
Speaking on the forthcoming Continuous Voters’ Registration, CVR, Dr Agboke stressed the importance of the media to informed the people on not just registering but collecting the Permanent Voter’s Card, PVC, after it is printed, lamenting the non collection of 360,794 PVC after the last CVR in the state.
“We implore you to assist the commission in Osun State to mobilise the electorates to come out, not only to register for the PVC, but for the collection as well. Kindly note that in Osun State we have total number of 1,954,800 registered of voters and the sum of 360,794 PVC uncollected.
“Not only on this, the media is also strategically positioned to help the commission speak loudly against the tendency to want to purchase votes on election Day like a commodity, against the orchestrated violence, against various electoral malfeasances”, he added.
It’s like when you are defending your PHD. It does not mean all the rubbish you’ve written, everything is correct. That’s why they tell you not to argue with your supervisor while presenting. What you do is to pick your biro and paper and note the corrections. If you want to argue or justify, you won’t graduate. Do you get the logic?
So, I don’t have the responsibility to convince you but I have the responsibility to offer an explanation about what happened. The commission has explained but Nigerians are waiting for a different version of explanation which I’m not ready to do. What happened was that the election was ongoing, a glitch in a simple dictionary terminology is an unforeseen incident that breaches or occurs in the ongoing activity and it’ll store what you are doing. So, a glitch can be in many forms. The one that we experienced was technological and we told you later that this was what happened but INEC is a dangerous organization. Our position is like somebody standing in the middle of Man United and Arsenal or between Man United and Chelsea. That referee, how he’s going to survive, I don’t know.
I don’t know the name of this premiership referee, they tagged him as the Man United referee.
For me, my attitude towards this issue all the time after that report is, it has been exhausted. The challenges facing INEC are all those areas of glitches and its allies. Not just that, the commission has the duty to look into them and ensure that they do not reoccur again. That is what I think is our responsibility and I want to assure you just like we’ve been doing. Election is an activity that the people who we are organizing the party for, they know how to handle it more than us and as much as we are trying to foresee a particular inadequacy, they come in other ways.
I was in Bayelsa and what I saw could not be published. So, a glitch is what we experience with regards to our technology and we’ve explained it, and that is that.
The Supreme Court did not overrule the application of the usage of BVAS. The Supreme Court in that judgement emphasized the fundamentals of the register of voters as the basis of anything INEC wants to do. By virtue of section 47 or thereabout of electoral acts, the commission has the power to deploy technology to deepen the process. Therefore, we can come up in 2027 without any kind of technology because we have the basis for it which is the law.
So, in all the elections we are going to conduct, the ones we’ve conducted, BVAS has formed a part and parcel of our process so it won’t be removed from part of the machines. BVAS is still the machine for the purpose of accreditation on our election.
Now, somebody is saying that in a particular place, they said they should dispense with BVAS because there is no network. No, that is why we told you that our synergy is very important. I don’t know whether you are all there, a platform was opened and I asked them to add all of you. If you are not there, we will add you there.
Anytime you see such a thing on elections, please call me. If you don’t call me, it was a manipulation they did. It wasn’t INEC regulation because you BVAS does not work with network. It’s an offline machine during accreditation. During accreditation, you don’t need the network. The network requirement is only when you want to upload into the RF.
This place is OLAIYA, you are looking for network and there’s no network in OLAIYA. All you have to do is to cross the bridge, and move to Alekuwodo, the network will be there and you’ll do your upload.
As at the time, the BVAS is working, anybody telling you that it’s using network is lying. If our staff says that, just stand beside them and make a call to me, leave the rest to me. I’ll bring the staff to explain it to me. So, there no where network is required and what you experienced in Iwo is a manipulation. INEC has not instructed anybody to do that.
Osun State is one of the state that has the largest statistics of the PWD and in the areas of election materials deployment, Osun State make use of the PWDs more than any other state so I want to assure you that we are going to make all the requirements available for them. So, they know infact we have a unit for it.
Yes, IYAGA is our major partner and they have been very critical about what INEC is doing and I know as a fact that IYAGA Africa is always putting us on our toes so they can’t be disregarded.
The issue of over voting is an event that will happen without our knowledge and over voting is totally discouraged by our electoral act and that’s why there’s a specific provision for over voting. If the number of ballots in the box is more than the accredited voter, the law does not ask us to ask questions, you just put zero in that unit. In fact, you are not even expected to bring it to the collation center but there are situations whereby some people will deliberately want to go and orchestrate over voting, in such a situation, we make use of the security to help us checkmate them. Over voting in certain situations will always occur but our law frowns at it very seriously and we don’t want it to be encouraged in any manner.
Now the question of somebody having a meeting with INEC, I have no idea if there are two INECs in Osun State maybe there’s any other INEC somewhere and those are who they are referring to. In the INEC I’m superintending in Osun state, we’ve not held any meetings, no one has approached us and no one is talking to us to do any irregularities for this election. Anybody can say anything but for us, our responsibility is to do our duties as stipulated by regulations and we will not allow ourselves to be used to frustrate the rules and regulations that we enacted by ourselves.
That will be unreasonable. You have not heard anything, you will start hearing a lot however, we are not perturbed about it. We are going to concentrate on the ball and do the right thing and ensure that Osun people’s mandate speaks for them. We are going to make sure that our staffs are not used to cause irregularities in the process and that I can assure you that with your support. If you hear anything, call us, don’t join the bandwagon and spread fake news about the commission
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