The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has clarified that a technical failure involving the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) will not automatically stop the collation of results during the 2027 elections. INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, made the clarification during a question-and-answer session at the commission’s world press conference and stakeholders meeting.
Amupitan said INEC is upgrading its BVAS and IReV platforms ahead of the elections following concerns over the technical challenges experienced during the 2023 polls. He disclosed that the commission had acquired 57,000 additional BVAS devices with inbuilt batteries and was also replacing batteries in existing devices to improve reliability and result transmission.
According to the INEC chairman, if results cannot be transmitted from a polling unit or group of polling units, voting and other electoral activities can continue in unaffected areas. He added that collation could proceed where the affected polling units do not alter the overall election outcome, while the Electoral Act allows voting in a polling unit to be postponed until the following day if a BVAS problem cannot be resolved, with INEC’s RATECH technical support teams available to respond to equipment failures.
