The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has disclosed that it would conduct mock accreditation nationwide ahead of the 2023 general election.
The INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, made the disclosure while speaking at the Chatham House, in London, yesterday.
According to Yakubu, the mock accreditation would be carried out across selected polling units to ascertain the integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), before the main elections begin in February.
He further stated that every BVAS machine deployed across the 774 local government areas had been tested, adding that the functionality of the machines was impressive.
Yakubu stated that back up machines have been readily provided in case of system glitches, adding that with all preparations on ground, the commission is really “comfortable and happy.”
He 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.”
Yakubu also said that the 2023 general election was an election for the young people in Nigeria.
Giving a breakdown of voter registration and collection of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) in Nigeria, Yakubu said records on the ground showed that the election would be dominated by the Nigerian youth.
Yakubu, who said he was encouraged by the turn-out of registered voters to collect their PVCs, said over 600,000 eligible voters collected their PVCs in Lagos alone within the last one month.
The INEC boss stated that there are currently 93.4million registered voters in Nigeria out of which 37million, that is 39per cent, are young people between the ages of 18 and 34.
“And then they’re closely followed by 33.4million or 35.3per cent middle-age voters between the ages of 35 and 49.
“Put together, these two categories constitute 75.39per cent of registered voters in Nigeria. So, actually the 2023 election is the election of the young people, because they have the numbers. Even the majority of the PVCs collected are collected by young people,” Yakubu added.
“So, out of the 93.4million, 70.4million registered voters are between the ages of 18 and 49,” Yakubu stated.
He reminded the audience that the collection of the PVCs would end on January 29, adding that “we have to end it because before the election we will publish number of PVCs collected on polling unit by polling unit basis nationwide.”