The Independent National Electoral Commission has revealed that it will conduct mock accreditation nationwide ahead of the 2023 general elections.
The INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, made the disclosure on Tuesday while speaking at the Chatham House, London.
He said the mock accreditation would be carried out across selected polling units to ascertain the integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, before the main elections begin in February.
Yakubu, however, further revealed that every BVAS machine deployed across the 774 local government had been tested, adding that the functionality of the machines was impressive.
He also stated that back up machines have been readily provided in case of system glitches.
He added that with all preparations on ground, the commission is really “comfortable and happy.”
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Yakubu said, “We have the machines for the 2023 elections but we didn’t want to take chances. Each and every machine has been tested and confirmed functional. For the last two weeks our officials were in the 36 states of the federation testing these machines, and the functionality is simply encouraging.
“The second thing we’re going to do, and pretty soon, is to conduct mock accreditation exercise nationwide ahead of the elections. We won’t wait until the main elections come, we will test the integrity of these machines with real life voters in selected polling units across the country.
“We did so in Ekiti and Osun, it was fantastic and we’re going to do so nationwide. Increasingly our people are becoming more excited about the deployment of this technology and we’re really happy.
“Also in terms of the numbers of these BVAS machines, we always make provision in case of malfunction or glitches. There is always a back up. We have IReV technical support that will fix the machines in the unlikely event of any glitches.
“However, where it fails to function completely in a polling unit, from previous experience there were isolated polling units, the law has a remedy that the commission should re-mobilise and re-conduct elections in the affected polling units within 24 hours, so we are really, really comfortable where we are.”
The Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Mr Peter Obi is not going to run a frivolous government if given the mandate by the Nigerian people and will not allow any waste of the peoples’ commonwealth.
Obi-Datti Media office has noted the negative excitement of some ruling party’s supporters over a remark made by the LP Presidential candidate concerning the issue of power generation in Nigeria.
Obi had said during his stellar appearance at Chatham House in United Kingdom on Monday that if elected he will declare a frontal war on power with a view to tackling the perennial power issue in the country squarely and decisively.
He had said that if South Africa with a population of less than 60 million and generating over 40 thousand megawatts is declaring emergence on power, Nigeria of 200m people with less than 20 thousand megawatts need to declare war.
The former Anambra state Governor also said that he intends to retain and improve on the existing power contract between Nigeria and German firm Siemens Company, but some APC followers clearly ignorant of the way Obi works, are saying that he is campaigning on Buhari’s project.
Obi has said severally that his campaign would be issue driven and therefore would not allow the noise of proxy soldiers to distract him or defocus his view.
The LP candidate is meeting Nigerians on points he intends to make to rebuild the tattered nation and not on a mission to find faults.
In Anambra state where he left yet unbeaten record in governance , he continued from where his predecessor Dr Chris Ngige stopped, notwithstanding how he came to power that Obi that had to recover it through the court.
The LP candidate had gone to Egypt to understudy their power issue and also to see how Siemen, the same company handling Nigeria did it in that country, that is a laudable mission of one who is really committed to making a difference in governance and should be praised for his unquenchable quest for solutions to issues
Obi has a lot to say about himself and what he intends to do why Nigerians should vote for him and is not on any fault finding or praise singing on anybody.PUNCH.