A lot of noise for the transmission of results via the BVAS

There were shouts and shouts almost everywhere regarding the credibility of the entire electoral process. The BVAS is at the center of all the complaints and controversies. Many believe that any survey result that is not transmitted via the BVAS is either fake or fraudulent. Is it really true?

The Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of the 2022 Elections issued by the INEC and in accordance with the enabling powers given to it by the Elections Act 2022 are our guide here. Many voters, including some of the political parties, are of the opinion (wrongly, I think) that the failure of election officials to transmit poll results electronically through the BVAS significantly damages the credibility of the results reported by INEC and therefore these reported results are fraudulent. Does the INEC regulation say? Is the transmission of the election results a sine qua non condition for the validity of the results of the announced polls? Is INEC obligated to rely on electronically transmitted results?

Clause 48(a) of the INEC Regulations provides that "An election result will only be collected if the collection agent is satisfied that the number of accredited voters matches the number recorded in the BVAS and that the votes obtained by the political parties on the result sheet are correct and agree with the result transmitted electronically or transferred directly from the voting unit as prescribed in these rules and guidelines." Section 48(C) of the same Regulations provides that "If no results have been transmitted directly electronically for a voting unit or any level of collation, the provision of Article 93 of these Regulations shall apply". This simply means that the regulations and INEC guidelines recognize situations in which the BVAS would not be used or unable to transmit or transfer any results from a voting unit or at any level of the collation process. word "shall" used in clause 48(c) above, INEC is obligated to resort to other manual means of transmission of survey results, if electronic transmission is not available or feasible.

Clauses 92 and 93 of the INEC regulations may help explain better. Clause 92 states that "At each collation level, where the INEC copy of the collated results of the immediate collation level exists, it shall be adopted for collation." Section 93 of the Regulations further emphasizes the use of hard copies as the primary source by providing that "where the INEC hard copy of the collated results of the immediate lower level of collation does not exist, the collation officer MUST use the electronically transmitted results or results from the IReV portal to continue collation. If none of these exist, the filing officer MUST request duplicate hard copies issued by the Commission from the following agencies in the order below: (1) Nigerian Police (2) Political Party Officers .

Clause 93 of the INEC Rules seems clear and visible as well, that hard copies of poll results are the primary source of collation, not electronically transmitted results. Electronically transmitted results would only be useful in identifying fraud in the collation process by comparing the electronic version of the result and the paper copies from the polling stations. It stops there. However, INEC has no justification for not transmitting the results via BIVAS. We can do better than that.

Going forward, more work needs to be done on the Elections Act 2022 to make it difficult for human intervention to thwart the good intentions of the law, which is to create an environment conducive to the conduct of elections. elections which will be generally accepted as credible, fair and transparent. Real-time electronic transmission of results should be included and made mandatory in the electoral law and the consequences spelled out for non-compliance.

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