Osun Election Tribunal: INEC Said BVAS Data Obtained by APC Incomplete

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has weighed in on last week’s judgment of Election Petitions Tribunal, which declared Oyetola Adegboyega of All Progressive Congress (APC), the winner of July 16, 2022, Osun State’s governorship election.

But the judgment, which was based on over-voting, has questioned the integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, a new tech system that the electoral umpire is relying on to conduct credible elections in 2023.

The tribunal nullified thousands of votes credited to Peoples Democratic Party candidate, Ademola Adeleke, who was declared the winner of the election by INEC.

But during his appearance on ChannelsTV’s program, Sunrise Daily, on Monday, a former Director, Voter Education and Publicity, INEC, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, said the discrepancy that resulted in the over-voting scandal does not discredit the BVAS.

Osaze-Uzzi said the avoidable discrepancy happened because the APC obtained a certified copy of the initial server report before some of the data had been transmitted by the BVAS hardware.

He noted that the situation created two sources of information – the BVAS server and its printout, which he indicated to be the reason while the jury was not unanimous in the verdict.

“The second [tribunal] member – the honourable justice who dissented from his two colleagues – said, ‘I would rather use the primary source of this information, and the primary source of this data is actually the machine itself,’” the INEC official said.

“It is basically a computer. So, rather than go to the server where it transmitted data, I would use the printout from the machine itself.

“The machines were tendered, so were the reports from the server, and there ought not to have been a discrepancy, but somewhere along the line, not all the data had been transmitted at the time the APC obtained the certified copy of the initial server report.”

The Osun State’s governorship election was a test-run of the BVAS, which INEC has touted as a solution to rigging that had characterized Nigerian elections in the past. However, the issue of over-voting has cast doubt on the machine’s ability to help the electoral body deliver election results that would not be contested.

Speaking on that, Osaze-Uzzi said the BVAS exposed the discrepancy, which is a validation that the hardware will play a big role in enhancing the electoral process.

“It was BVAS that exposed that as it were, and the fact that the BVAS report was relied on. But we have to be careful; which of the BVAS reports was relied on? Was it what was transmitted to the server – to the back-end – or was it the BVAS itself?” he asked.

Talking more about the judgment, Osaze-Uzzi said there is a need to break the verdict of the tribunal. He explained that the transmission of data from the BVAS created a discrepancy that resulted in different opinion of the three-man panel. According to him, the chairman and the second member of the tribunal relied on the initial report and the initial report of the back-end, duly certified by INEC.

“It was downloaded from the server [after it was] transmitted. But a couple of days later – INEC used the word ‘synchronised’, I’m not too sure I like that word, but – you synchronise it and say, ‘Have all the results been transmitted – has all data been transmitted from the machine, BVAS itself, to the server?’

“The machine is a physical one and then it transmits to a physical one. It now went, checked and said, ‘There’s a problem here.’ The BVAS report now downloaded itself, [we] now brought it out and examined each BVAS machine and now found out that no, some data was not transmitted to the server,” Osaze-Uzzi said.

The judgment, which has stirred mixed reactions from many quarters, is expected to be looked into by higher courts. Adeleke said he is going to challenge the judgment at the Court of Appeal.