INEC won’t grant access to data base, says no voting with TVCs
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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, Barrister Festus Okoye has stated that the electoral umpire will not grant access to any political party to inspect its database containing biometric information of all registered voters.
Barrister Okoye further stated that INEC will not allow people to vote with Temporary Voter’s Card (TVCs) despite the recent court judgement to that effect.
Okoye made the pronouncement while speaking on Channels TV‘s “Politics” on Sunday.
Explaining why INEC will not allow political parties to view data on its database, he said that all the parties have already been given copies of register of voters as well as their polling units in accordance with the provisions of the law.
Okoye also said that the Commission hopes to conclude reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) by Tuesday for deployment to the polling units.
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 Assembly elections.
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.
On the controversy surrounding the posting of the Director ICT days before the election, Okoye said all Administrative Secretaries of the Commission are Directors adding that decision was taken in the best interest of the nation.
He said the decision was taken at a time when the commission was panicky about whether there were going to be new Resident Electoral Commission while preparing for elections.
He said at that stage the Commission needed to post its best hands to serve as Administrative Secretaries and manage the elections in the absence of the Resident Electoral Commissioners.
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Regarding the judgement directing the Commission to allow two persons to vote with the Temporary Voters Card, he said that INEC will not allow the citizens to vote using TVCs.
He pointed out that the judgement affected only the two petitioners and not the country at large.
Meanwhile, he noted that 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 voters during registration was to let them know that they have been registered while the information they provided are processed. Read more.
