INEC National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Barrister Festus Okoye, stated this while speaking on Channels TV‘s politics today on Sunday.
By Emma Ogbuehi
Despite the ruling by the Presidential Election Petitions Court sitting at the Court of Appeal in Abuja that political parties challenging the presidential election result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should have access to the materials used in conducting the polls, the umpire said at the weekend that it will not allow any political party have access to its data base containing biometric information of all registered voters.
INEC National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Barrister Festus Okoye, stated this while speaking on Channels TV‘s politics today on Sunday.
The programme was monitored by TheNiche.
The Labour Party, on Thursday, knocked INEC, saying the electoral umpire deliberately came up with its idea of reconfiguring the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines after its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, sought to examine the election materials.
This was as the party faulted the commission’s claim of backing up the data retrieved from the BVAS without the presence of independent witnesses and representatives of political parties.
Similarly, the Peoples Democratic Party expressed the same sentiments.
But reacting on Thursday, the Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, said the data back-up of the BVAS was an internal affair of the commission and not open to inspection by parties.
“The reconfiguration or data back-processes of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines is strictly an internal affair of the Independent National Electoral Commission, that no external eyes are allowed to witness.
Reiterating the same point on Sunday, Okoye, who said all the political parties have already been given copies of register of voters as well as their polling units in accordance with the provisions of the law, vowed that the Commission will never allow political parties have access to the data base.
TheNiche reports that the Presidential Election Petitions Court granted the commission’s request to reconfigure the BVAS that was used for the presidential poll.
Okoye insisted that the request by the Labour Party to monitor the commission’s process of reconfiguring and backing up results on its BVAS machines would not be granted.
“On the issue of a political party saying they want to come and look at our cloud, IReV or into the brain of the BIVAS, the commission will not allow that to happen.
“Every political party that deploys polling agents has a copy of the polling units level results and if a political party now says they want to come into the commission to look at the database containing biometric information of all registered voters, we won’t allow that to happen because the laws do not allow that.
“Look, the commission is the regulator of political parties and the political parties cannot, just because of so many things taking place, come around and want to regulate the commission. The commission will now allow that to happen,” Okoye said.
He also said the Commission hopes to conclude reconfiguration of the BVAS by Tuesday for deployment to the polling units on Saturday, March 18.
He, however, said that any BVAS that fails to provide a backup system for the results of the Presidential and National Assembly election will not be reconfigured for the March 18 Governorship and State Assembly elections.
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While dismissing a backup plan for the IREV during the governorship election, Okoye said when there are challenges with upholding polling units results during the election, the ICT department is equipped to deal with such challenges.
Okoye assured Nigerians that the commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) will be functional during the March 18 elections.
INEC also justified the transfer of its director in charge of Information Communication Technology (ICT), Chidi Nwafor, who was transferred a few months before the 2023 general elections.
Following the failure of INEC to upload results of the February 25 presidential election from the polling units to its portal in real time, there have been speculations of what could have gone wrong, with many saying that the commission missed the expertise of Nwafor.
However, Okoye insisted that the commission is built in a way that no department is wrapped around an individual.
“The present leadership of the commission wants to build a professional organisation that is not wrapped around one individual. The individual (Nwafor) mentioned is a very good friend of mine; he is a director in the commission and any director can be posted out or to go and become an administrative secretary,” Okoye said.
“Now the time we readjusted list of administrative secretaries was the time the commission was slightly panicky on whether we were going to have new resident electoral commissioners and we were preparing for elections.
“So, the commission decided in its wisdom that we are going to post our best hands to the various states as administrative secretaries to go and prepare the states for the purposes of election and that was exactly what the commission did.
“We have a department in charge of ICT and the Chidi I know tried to build a department that can stand on its own whether he is there on not and that is the same thing with every department,” he added.
Okoye attributed INEC’s inability to transmit polling units results directly to its portal in real time as it promised before the elections to “technical glitches” which he said have been rectified ahead of the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.
He assured Nigerians that the commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) will be functional during the March 18 elections.
On the judgement directing the Commission to allow two individuals to vote with the Temporary Voters card, he said the commission has already filed an appeal as INEC is the only body allowed by law to determine what can be used for voting.
He said the slip given to the individuals during registration was to let them know that they have been registered while the information they provided are being processed.
