-Precious Ahiakwo-Ovie
The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has come out to say that the new electoral law has empowered the electorate to monitor every process throughout the election apart from snapping picture inside the voting booth.
Speaking at the flag-off of Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ),Rivers State Council “2023 Correspondents’ week” in Port Harcourt, the Resident Electoral Commissioner(REC) Johnson Alalibo represented by the Director of INEC Voters Education and information Mark Usulo said this will rule out the possibility of rigging this 2023 General election in Nigeria.
Mark Usulo who was the keynote Speaker, spoke on the intensity of the forthcoming general elections, noting that the media will play a key role in any successful election globally.
He said “the issues of inputting numbers into bi-modal machine will not arise as the commission has trained stakeholders, party agents on what BIVAS Machine looks like and its functionality, and to also report immediately any BIVAS machine deployed to any ward that is not tagged, or starting or taking off from zero zero 0000”.
Mr. Usulo debunked the recent rumour that RAC centers were being sited at residential buildings, describing it as unfounded. The REC while commending the media for a job well done so far, challenged them to prepare the ground for public debate by political parties, as agenda setters. He said INEC has decided to accredit all the media Organisations for the forthcoming general elections online for fairness. He assured that INEC is ready to conduct a peaceful 2023 general elections.
He emphasized that the BVAS and PVCs will be used for the conduct of the said poll and appealed to Journalists to escalate the information widely.
He also noted that “The BVAS has been configured to work with all networks available in all location, and the BAVS also has a special feature of offline mode to be activated when there is no network and any information keyed in will automatically be entered into the BIVAS when the network returns ruling out on the possibility of power and network failures to affect the process”.
Mr. Usulo advised on electorate vigilance throughout the process and the electoral law has given power back to the people to report any misgivings on election day.
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