By ONYEKACHI EZE
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), said it has configured the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to track the user and what he or she does with it.
The commission also assured that the cash crunch being experienced in the country would not affect the conduct of next weekend’s elections. INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu who spoke on Saturday when he monitored the training session of ad hoc staff to be used for the conduct of the elections, stated that the BVAS machine has back-end, adding, “We know who is handling which BVAS.”
He warned them not to give the machine “to someone else to go somewhere because the machine is dedicated to a polling unit and we know who is responsible for any polling units.” Prof. Yakubu advised the ad hoc staff to be neutral and demonstrate loyalty only to the Federal Republic of Nigeria. “So we have to rely on you and other categories of staff.
But you are going to operate at the most important level of the electoral system; at the polling unit levels because that is where citizens go and vote. “All of you will swear an oath of neutrality; your loyalty is to Nigeria and Nigerians and not to any political party or any candidate. “You will be the INEC Chairman at your polling unit. You are the king at the polling units,’’ Yakubu further told them.
The INEC Chairman who also inspected the venue of the national collation centre for the presidential election at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, told journalists that not all election operations require cash payment, adding that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has assured the commission that it would meet its cash requirements.
According to him, “the bulk of payment for goods and services is made through electronic transfer.
“But there are certain critical services that will be remunerated by cash; and that is why we went to the CBN for and it is a small percentage of the budget. “The Central Bank has assured us that we will not suffer any encumbrances in that regard. So there are no issues with respect to that,” he said.
Prof. Yakubu further allayed the fears that the protests over cash crunch in some parts of the country would pose any challenge to the conduct of the elections.
Credit: NEW TELEGRAPH.
