A former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to operate an electronic collation system that the Biometric Vote Accreditation System (BVAS) will upload results directly.
Osita Chidoka said if BVAS has an electronic collation system, vote manipulation through manual handling would seize to characterize the country’s electoral system.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain added that BVAS electronic collation would reduce and eliminate issues of votes exceeding the number of accredited voters recorded by BVAS which should be the only means of accrediting voters as recorded in Imo State last governorship election.
Speaking in an interview with Arise TV, on Thursday, Chidoka advised INEC to implement the BVAS E-collation system in the September Edo governorship election.
He explained, “Now, what that does is that the arithmetic errors which were widespread in the election results, we saw so many cancellations, these will be eliminated. The upload to the BVAS will be the results that came from the BVAS, not the ones they snapped.
“They can do both, the one from the BVAS and the one that they snapped. Now what that will do immediately is that it will eliminate errors and it will eliminate the possibility of entering more votes than the BVAS has accredited. So the system will be set that once the total vote is more than the BVAS accreditation, the result will not go.
“I think that they should also upload the ward collation result. When we get to EC8B, INEC immediately after collating it. Again, they should use a BVAS to collate it, enter it online and then copy it out manually.”
He noted that Edo and Ondo governorship elections would have minimal issues if his proposed method is adopted.
“Once they do that, they should upload it so that we will be sure that what happened in the polling unit is what entered in the ward collation.
“Once that is done, I believe that if they try it out in Edo or Ondo State, the election will be wonderful,” he added.