The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has ruled out the possibility of rigging this 2023 General election in Nigeria. saying the new electoral law has empowered the electorate to monitor every process throughout the election apart from snapping picture inside the voting boot.
Speaking at the flag-off of Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ),Rivers State Council Monday January 23rd 2023 Correspondents’ week in Port Harcourt. The Resident Electoral Commissioner(REC) Johnson Alalibo represented by the Director of INEC Voters Education and information Mark Usulo who was the keynote Speaker spoke on the intensity of the forthcoming general elections, noting that the media will play a key role in any successful election globally.
He said the issues of inputting numbers into bi-modal machine will not arise as the commission has trained stakeholders, party agents on what BIVAS Machine looks like and its functionality, to also report immediately any BIVAS machine deployed to any ward that is not tagged, or starting or taking off from zero zero 0000
Mr Usulo debunked the recent Rumour that RAC centers were being sited at residential buildings, describing it as unfounded. The REC while commending the media for a job well done so far, challenged them to prepare the ground for public debate by political parties, as agenda setters. He said INEC has decided to accredit all the media Organisations for the forthcoming general elections online for fairness. He assured that INEC is ready to conduct a peaceful 2023 general elections.
He emphasized that the BVAS and PVCs will be used for the conduct of the said poll and appealed to Journalists to escalate the information widely. He also noted that BVAS was configured to work with all networks available in all location, and the the BAVS also has a special feature of offline mode to be activated when there is no network and that any information keyed in will automatically be entered into the BIVAS when the network returns ruling out on the possibility of power and network failures to affect the process.
Mr Usulo advised on electorate vigilance throughout the process and the electoral laws has given power back to the people to report any misgivings on election day