By Chimezie Godfrey
The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, says it is considering the devolution of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) nationwide in order to provide more eligible voters with the opportunity to register.
INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, revealed this during a meeting with the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) held on Tuesday in Abuja.
The meeting is coming a few days after the Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) held three days ago on Saturday 12th February 2022.
Prof. Yakubu who welcomed the Resident Electoral Commissioners to their first meeting this year disclosed that the Commission is preparing to conduct bye-elections in four States of the Federation to fill six vacancies in the House of Representatives and some State Houses of Assembly.
According to him, in addition to the bye-elections, the end-of-tenure Ekiti and Osun State Governorship elections are fast approaching, as the Party primaries for the Ekiti election ended on 29th January, 2022.
The INEC Chairman therefore revealed that in preparation for the forthcoming elections, the Commission has decided to devolve the CVR exercise to Ward level in both Ekiti and Osun States to enable more citizens register
He equally said that the CRV devolution will be expanded beyond the state and Local Governments levels.
He said,”The Commission has already displayed the personal particulars of the candidates in our State and Local Government offices in Ekiti State as required by law. For the Osun State election, party primaries begin tomorrow 16th February and end on 12th March 2022. The Governorship election in Ekiti State will hold on Saturday 18th June while that of Osun State will be conducted a month later on Saturday 16th July 2022.
“Even as we continue to conduct elections, the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise which started in June last year is now in its 3rd Quarter.
“In view of the forthcoming elections, the Commission has decided to devolve the CVR exercise to Ward level in both Ekiti and Osun States to enable more citizens register.
“Similarly, in order to provide more eligible voters with the opportunity to register, the Commission is considering the devolution of the exercise nationwide beyond our State and Local Government offices where the registration currently takes place.
“The devolution of the CVR exercise to other designated centres is one of the major issues for discussion at this meeting.”
Yakubu further said that closely related to the issue of CVR is the balanced distribution of voters to polling units nationwide.
According to him, last year, the Commission achieved the historic feat of expanding voter access to polling units nationwide.
“The idea is to decongest the densely populated polling units by converting the erstwhile Voting Points (VPs) and Voting Point Settlements (VPS) to Polling Units and relocating some of them to unserved and underserved areas to make it easier for voters on Election Day.
“While this lofty goal has been achieved in many States, there are still congested Polling Units and other Polling Units with between 0 and 50 voters as we saw in some of the recent elections.
“Over the next few weeks, the Commission will intensify efforts to address the issue ahead of the forthcoming Ekiti and Osun Governorship elections and ultimately the 2023 General Election. Finding a solution to this issue is one of the reasons for convening this meeting,” he said.
On Election Day administration, the INEC said the Commission has over the years made giant strides in improving electoral logistics, staff recruitment, training, deployment and the introduction of technology for voter verification and authentication.
According to him, the creation of Registration Area Centres (RACs) improved the early opening of polls.
“The benefits of these new innovations to the electoral process and the credibility of our elections have been enormous.
“The outcome of elections conducted since the introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) in the Isoko South I State Constituency bye-election, followed by the Anambra State Governorship election and most recently in the FCT Area Council election has been positively adjudged by observers as credible.
“However, the challenges to the optimal functionality of the device are acknowledged and we are working on them.
“When the Commission introduced the BVAS last year, the compact device was intended to achieve two objectives.
“First is the verification of the genuineness of the Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs) and the fingerprint or facial authentication of voters during accreditation.
“Secondly, to replace the Z-pad for uploading the polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on Election Day. So far, the BVAS has performed optimally in verifying the authenticity of PVCs and uploading images of Polling Unit results to the IReV.
“We will review and improve its functionality for biometric accreditation of voters in the forthcoming bye-elections and off-season Governorship elections before the 2023 General Election,” Yakubu said.
He maintained that the Commission remains convinced that the deployment of technology in elections safeguards the integrity of the vote and provides a better guarantee for electoral credibility than the best manual process.
