Polls: IReV glitches didn’t impact functionality of our BVAS — INEC insists

The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has dismissed concerns that the technical downtime experienced with its Results Viewing Portal IReV in last 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 has to do with Huang the BVAS to transmit 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 the INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi.

According to Oyekanmi, “the INEC Result Viewing portal IReV and BVAS are two separate entities, and they 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 25th February could not have affected the functionality of the BVAS, which in any case, performed its duty excellently on election day”, he said.

Mr Oyekanmi also noted that the BVAS cannot be described as an invention of one staff member of INEC, as it is 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 the 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.

“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 25th February 2023 during the Presidential election is nothing but an attempt to mislead the public.

“The truth is the glitches could still have occured 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 that the glitches occurred just 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 the position of Administrative Secretary is a demotion, I would say that 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”, he explained.

(TNT)