The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has dismissed concerns that the technical downtime experienced with its Results Viewing Portal, IreV, in penultimate Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections impacted negatively on the functionality of its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS, saying the two technologies are almost mutually exclusive.
According to the commission, the only point of convergence is the issue of the BVAS transmitting from polling units election results to the IReV at the conclusion of polls.
“There is also a provision for the BVAS to transmit the PU result in the offline mode if there is no network at the polling unit at the time of the activity,” said Chief Press Secretary CPS to INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi.
According to Oyekanmi, “the INEC Result Viewing portal, IreV, and BVAS are two separate entities, and are independent of each other.
“The relationship between the two is that the BVAS is used to transmit the picture of Form EC8A, which is the Polling Unit Result Sheet in PDF format, as well as the Voters’ Accreditation Data to the IREV.
“Therefore, the glitches suffered by the IReV for some hours on February 25 could not have affected the functionality of the BVAS, which in any case, performed its duty excellently on election day.”
He also noted that the BVAS could not be described as an invention of one staff member of INEC, as it was the commission’s idea and invention, just as the now rested Smart Card Reader, SCR.
He said having decided to invent the BVAS, the commission gave the assignment to the most relevant department within the commission, namely ICT, to bring the idea into fruition.
“The ICT Department is populated by a sizable number of brilliant Engineers and IT experts, who worked very hard as a team for several months to successfully actualize the Commission’s dream. After completing the assignment of designing the BVAS, the ICT Department notified the Commission,” the CPS said.
He noted that it was improper to insinuate that a former Director of ICT or any other staff for that matter single-handedly designed the BVAS.
Oyekanmi said: “If we are to praise anyone for the invention, it would be the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, because as the commission’s chairman, the buck stops on his table and the commission it was that conceived the innovation in the first place.
“At the same time, to insinuate that the transfer of a former Director of ICT to another state as administrative secretary was both a demotion and the cause of the glitches experienced with the INEC Result Viewing Portal in the afternoon of February 25, 2023, during the presidential election is nothing but an attempt to mislead the public.
“The truth is the glitches could still have occurred even if the former ICT Director was still in charge. Recently, Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter had serious glitches that prevented many people, including me, from using those applications for many hours.
”But eventually, the respective companies surmounted the challenges. Now, would you say the glitches occurred because one engineer resigned from or was transferred within the company? Of course not.
“While the former ICT Director is, indeed, a respected, brilliant employee who played his role satisfactorily, there are equally other staff members within the commission that can effectively play his former role.
”Again, contrary to the impression that the position of administrative secretary is a demotion, I would say it is an elevation.
“The administrative secretary at our state office is the most senior staff there, second only to the Resident Electoral Commissioner. It’s like the role of a permanent secretary in a federal parastatal. ”When the REC is not around, the administrative secretary becomes an Acting REC. That’s how important the position is.”
