The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Bayelsa State, Dr. Emmanuel Hart, has said there was no going back on the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for voter accreditation during the 2023 general election.
He spoke yesterday in Yenagoa at a meeting with party leaders, to give them update on the coming poll.
The REC said there was no going back on the transmission of results to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on election day, adding that there would be no incident form that enabled ineligible persons to vote, using other people’s permanent voter cards (PVCs) during elections.
He said the foundation for credible election was the voter register, noting that before now, INEC began an update of the register during the CVR, which started on June 28, 2021 and was suspended on July 31, 2022.
Hart said while the exercise was on, the commission gave updates on a weekly basis.
Read Also: BVAS will enhance credibility of elections, Akpabio
He said: “I wish to remind you all about the initial outcome of the statistics of voter registration for Bayelsa State when the Automated Biometric Identification System was used to clean up from June 28, 2021 to January 14, 2022.”
“Of a total of 132,628 people that completed registration, only 43,678 were valid and 88,950 invalid. Invalid registration for that period was 67.1 per cent.
“The reasons were double/multiple registrations, underage registration and outright fake registration.
“The commission has completed the exercise to clean up the register and in the next few days, hard copies will be displayed at the 105 registration areas (wards) and eight local governments.
“The register will also be published on INEC’s website for claims and objections as required by law. The physical display of the register will take place at the registration areas (wards) from November 12 to 18.”
The REC appealed to the party leaders as critical stakeholders to take the opportunity of the display to scrutinise the list and help the commission clean it further so that the final register of voters for the 2023 general election could be compiled and published.
He, however, said Bayelsa was facing challenges with the flood experienced in the past six weeks, stressing that the import of that was that a number of the registration area headquarters might still be inaccessible at the beginning of the display on November 12.