In advance of the general elections in 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, has announced that it will conduct mock accreditation across the country.
Mahmood Yakubu, the INEC Chairman, revealed this during a Tuesday speech at the Chatham House in London.
Before the main elections begin in February, Yakubu stated that a mock accreditation process would be conducted in a few chosen polling locations to check the validity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System.
He added that every BVAS device installed across the 774 local governments had been tested and noted how well the devices worked.
In case of system failures, backup machines have been made available, according to Yakubu, who also said that the commission is “comfortable and delighted” with the preparations made so far.
The second thing we’ll shortly do is perform fake accreditation exercises across the country in advance of the elections. Instead of waiting until the general elections, we will test the accuracy of these machines with actual voters in a number of polling places around the nation.
“We tried this in Ekiti and Osun, and it was great. Now we’re going to do this everywhere. We’re thrilled that the excitement among our employees about the use of this technology is growing.
“We always plan ahead in terms of the amount of these BVAS machines in case there are problems or hiccups. Always have a backup plan. If there are any issues, we have IReV technical support that will fix the equipment.
“However, where it does not operate fully in a polling unit, from prior experience there were isolated polling units, the law has a remedy that the commission should re-mobilize and re-conduct elections in the affected polling units within 24 hours, so we are really, really comfortable where we are,” said the election commission.