The Governorship election in Anambra State on Saturday was inconclusive, resulting in the extension to Sunday for collation of results and to allow voters who were not able to vote due to malfunctioning of the Bimodal Accreditation System (BVAS) to vote.
Penpushing reports that Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Dr Nkwachukwu Orji made this known at a press briefing held at the commission’s headquarters in Awka
The Commissioner explained that the measure became necessary to enable more if not all, eligible voters to cast their votes in the areas affected by the malfunctioning of the system, noting that the Bimodal Accreditation System (BVAS) malfunctioned because of software glitches.
“In line with existing regulations and guidelines of the Commission, any intending voter who is on the queue by 4.00 pm shall be allowed to vote. The extension of time arose out of several field reports that voters have had problems with accreditation.
‘As I said in my earlier briefing, any Polling Unit where there was a consistent malfunction of the BVAS, and therefore the voters in the Unit were unable to vote, the election will be continued tomorrow’, he added
‘The Commission is currently investigating the reason the accreditation devices, Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), have worked perfectly in some Polling Units, but not in others’, he added.
“In cases of malfunction of the BVAS, the Presiding Officer must inform the voters and polling agents that accreditation and voting shall continue tomorrow or at another time determined by the Commission’, Orji said.
Penpushing further reports that, Nkwachukwu said that the commission was already working to rectify the problem, adding that deployment was adversely affected by transportation challenges in some locations.
“It must be noted that on account of security concerns, some of the transporters that were mobilized and collected 50 per cent of their sign-on fee backed out at the last moment, leaving some of our ad-hoc staff stranded’.
Also, some of the trained ad-hoc staff backed out at the last moment. The Commission is on top of these challenges and extant regulations and guidelines will be applied. We assure you that the commission is determined to make all votes count, he said.
Penpushing also reports that, the Resident Electoral Commissioner appealed to all voters, candidates, stakeholders and political parties to remain calm and law-abiding, with assurance that no eligible voters would be denied their voting rights.
‘We have now entered a critical stage of the process, namely the collation of results. We have made adequate arrangements for collation of the results at the Registration Areas, Local Government Areas and the State level. Results from Polling Units are already being uploaded to our INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal and the Registration Area and LGA collation have been progressing well. I implore all stakeholders to be patient while this painstaking process progresses’.
‘I am glad to announce that the State Collation will commence tomorrow at the State Collation Centre here in our State Office. I invite all those who are entitled to be present – Collation Officers, accredited Polling Agents, observers and the media – to attend the State Collation, which will open at 10am tomorrow morning’.
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