Forgive my Sunday morning musings, sometimes it could take to China and back, those random Sunday morning thoughts before I head out for church service or somewhere else. But frankly my thoughts were ruminating around on the just concluded Ekiti Governorship election, where it appears the BVAS machine may have been the masterstroke.

This was apparent as less than 24 hours after voting started, the electoral umpire had already announced a winner for the Ekiti State Governorship Election.

BVAS is an acronym for Bimodal Voter Accreditation System. It is an electronic device designed to read Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and authenticate voters, using the voters’ fingerprints in order to prove that they are eligible to vote at a particular polling unit.

Beyond this, BVAS appears to be a replacement for the Z-pad for uploading the polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time on election day.

BVAS also acts as the INEC Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) during voter registration. Its usage has also eliminated the use of incident forms during accreditation on an election day.

What this implies is that Nigeria is gradually tilting towards electronic voting, thereby accentuating the views of the likes of Professor Isaac Zeb-Obipi that e-voting is the way forward if nipping the current electoral concerns in the bud is sought after.

Professor Zeb-Obipi, who is the Director of the Information Technology Centre (ITC) at the Rivers State University (RSU), Port Harcourt, was the brain behind the deployment of e-voting system in the recent election that produced the current leadership of the Ijaw National Congress (INC). He has over the years, as the immediate past Dean of Student Affairs in RSU ensured the integrity of student union elections through the instrumentality of e-voting.

I watched how Seun Okinbaloye of Channels Television in partnership with YIAGA Africa went ahead to analyze the electronically transmitted live results on the virtual dashboard where results were dropping into the portal in real-time.

Interestingly, I learnt that the physically collated results tallied with the transmitted results on the portal. That’s perhaps why there is relative calm and general acceptance of the results so announced.

Electronic transmission of results will significantly cut short some, if not all, of the sharp practices associated with collation of results at the registration area centres (RAC) and various collation centers in the country. It will boost the trust of the citizens on the process.

The significance of this development is that there will be gross reduction in the practice of “shine-shine bobo; the more you look, the less you see”; or better still, what APC presidential candidate referred to years ago as “scientific rigging”. These phenomena have for years plagued our electoral system and it now appears the new Electoral Act has provided the needed leverage to curb these as has now been witnessed in Ekiti State.

It is on this note that I’m constrained to commend the Professor Mahmood Yakubu led INEC for the introduction of the BVAS machine, and the courage to follow through to its exhaustive utilization.

I consider the Ekiti State Governorship election as a pilot study for the reliability of the BVAS machine. We can now go ahead to administer the electoral instrument to the participating states in the forthcoming elections.

This position is without prejudice to the sad reality that political mischief makers may understudy the BVAS and its associated systems with a view to undermining it and I want to suppose that INEC and her stakeholders would not lose sight of this aspect of things.

I hope to return for the discussion of the findings of the process with positive summary, conclusion and commendation of INEC after the 2023 general elections.

Boma Waribor, a media and communications professional, observes from Bonny Island.