INEC To Deploy Over 3,000 BVAS For Saturday’s Supplementary Polls

Over 3,000 Bimodal Voter Authentication Systems (BVAS) would be deployed for the supplementary elections, slated for Saturday, April 15.

Naija News gathered that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed that the BVAS to be used would be configured and re-configured ahead of the polls on Saturday.

It was learnt that the electoral umpire  would conduct supplementary elections in 2,660 polling units across 185 local government areas of 24 states.

The commission had noted that all outstanding governorship, national and state Assembly supplementary elections would be held where they were previously suspended due to hitches, including violence, for which the exercise was declared inconclusive.

This online news platform understands that an INEC source who spoke based on anonymity told The Punch that over 2,000 BVAS would be re-configured and some new BVAS replacing the stolen or damaged machines during the 2023 general elections would be configured.

The source said “There are some BVAS that will be configured afresh, because the ones deployed for the previous election were either stolen or damaged.

We cannot reconfigure stolen or damaged BVAS, so we need to configure fresh device for such PUs.

“We are reconfiguring close to 2,500 BVAS and configuring few numbers afresh plus backups.

“The total BVAS that will be deployed, including backup, will be a little above 3,000.”