Nigerians living abroad under the aegis of Diasporans for Good Governance (DGG) have questioned the integrity and efficiency of Automatic Biometric Identification System (ABIS) and Biometric Voter Accountability System (BVAS) to be deployed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the conduct of the forthcoming general election.

The group which premised its verdict on findings based on INEC’s data from Continuous Voter Registration exercise which recorded high number of de-validated voters in the South East and South South regions, saying the system seems to be more efficient in some regions while others have undue advantage.

Stating its position at a World Press Briefing in Abuja on Tuesday, a member of the group, Mr Christian Chima, said the analysis was a product of multi-stakeholder efforts at ensuring that INEC’s equipment and the voters register are cleaned up and updated before the polls.

“Some of us here are aware of the CVR exercise that started in July 2021. We looked at the voter revalidation data. Out of 2.78 million Nigerians that were invalidated by INEC, we noticed that 49.3 percent of those are from the South South and South East regions. Other regions of the country had an average rejection rate of 17 percent. Whereas the South East and the South South had an average rejection rate of 35.2 percent, almost twice that of the national average. And we have looked at the data and INEC says it used ABIS system to do the invalidation based on the three criteria it listed on its website.

“And the DGG is saying with a compromise voter registers that the elections cannot be credible and if INEC is advertising ABIS as the software that it used to process all those registration requests, then what the voter register is suggesting to us is that the software is not as efficient as advertised because that same software that invalidated 1.78 million Nigerians previously failed to track and eliminate the multiple incidents of the underage voters as you can see from the voter register that is displayed.

“It is on that, that we are calling on INEC and Nigerians to subject these systems to a multi stakeholder audit and integrity test because the only things Nigerians know about these systems are what INEC has told us and from what we know, these systems are not working as advertised,” he said.

Responding to questions on why the group would call for integrity at this time when the elections are around the corner, and the rationale behind its conclusion on the questionability of INEC’s equipment and communication methods to Nigerians, Mr Chima said the Commission has been less than truthful in its response to critical questions. (Daily Independent)

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