BVAS, INEC’s Game Changer to Trap Vote Fraudsters

Communities now have a better chance to make their votes count as vote fraudsters now have a new challenge: the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System,BVAS.

Combining fingerprint and facial authentication, the BVAS is an integrated output of the Z-Pad and the Smart Card Reader (SCR).

According to the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission,  Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the development is a response to agitation of political parties for stronger methods to discourage identity theft.

He was addressing them at the third quarterly meeting with political parties held in Abuja.

His words: “For some time, many stakeholders, including leaders of political parties, have called on the Commission to strengthen the voter accreditation process during elections, especially with reference to the use of incident form where the SCR fails to authenticate the fingerprints of a voter. Such concern is legitimate given the fact that the SCR successfully verifies any card that belongs to the polling unit for which it is configured, irrespective of who presents it. Their apprehension, therefore, is that using the incident form to cover those whose fingerprints are not authenticated by the SCR, a voter may be able to use another person’s PVC to vote during an election.

“To address this concern, the Commission attempted to introduce the facial biometric authentication during accreditation of the voters using the Z-Pad tablet to complement the fingerprint process through the Card Reader before the Edo Governorship election in September 2020. However, the Commission was not entirely satisfied with the pilot held in the Nasarawa Central State Constituency bye-election a month earlier in August 2020. We therefore suspended the idea to enable us to do some more work. Over the last year, we reviewed the situation, and we think we have found the appropriate technology to address it. The Z-pad was, therefore, only used to upload Polling Unit results to the IReV portal during elections.

“The functionality of the Z-pad has now been integrated into the IVED currently used for voter registration. On Election Day, the same device will be used for the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for fingerprint authentication during accreditation and where it fails for facial authentication.

He also highlighted the functions of the INEC Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) unveiled March 17, this year to

facilitate the physical registration aspect of the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR).

Explaining the background to the adoption of the IVED, Prof. Yakubu explained that various concerns being expressed by stakeholders about the voter accreditation process during elections informed the Commission’s decision.

His words: “While working on the register of voters, the Commission has also been continuously innovating on strengthening the credibility of voter accreditation and result management during elections in Nigeria. As always, the deployment of appropriate technology is crucial and desirable. The introduction of the machine-readable PVC combined and Smart Card Reader (SCR) were important innovations. So too is the uploading of polling unit results in real-time on Election Day. The reality is that technology always advances with the passage of time. Consequently, the Commission must keep pace with the ever-changing world of global information and communication technology. We are at one such crossroad at the moment.”