No electronic transmission of election figures as INEC assures Nigerians of deployment of BVAS nationwide – Yakubu

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu has reaffirmed that as always, the commission would not electronically transmit raw election figures on Saturday, February 25.

He made this known during an interaction with leaders of Foreign Election Observation Missions in Nigeria. Yakubu during the interaction said that Presiding Officers would rather, be required to use the Bimodal Voter Authentication System BVAS to photograph the result sheets of each polling unit and upload them on the INEC Result Viewing Portal IREV for Nigerians.

According to the INEC boss, the electoral body was doing everything possible to protect the integrity of the results and prevent possible hacking as raw figures are more vulnerable to hacking.

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He said; “The BVAS confirms that the cards issued by the Commission and presented by the voter is genuine and the voter is authenticated using the fingerprints and where it failed, the facials. Where both fail, the voter can’t vote. That is a matter of law.

“After the process is completed at the polling unit, the image of the polling unit result will be taken by the BVAS and uploaded unto what we call the INEC Result Viewing Portal where citizens can see polling unit level results as the processes are completed at the polling unit level.

Speaking further, Yakubu said, : “The difference between what Kenya did in 2015 and what we are doing is that we are not transmitting raw figures for collation. In fact, the law does not allow for electronic collation of results. So, we don’t transmit raw figures because raw figures transmitted online are more susceptible to hacking while images of a document are not susceptible to hacking.

“Like every new technology, initially, it will present its own challenges. In the last elections in Osun and Ekiti, the BVAS performed well. But, this is the first time that we are deploying the machine for national elections. We conducted a mock accreditation exercise and the exercise had some issues which we have addressed.

“So, we are confident that on Saturday, the machines will work and perform optimally” Yakubu assured Nigerians.