Festus Okoye: INEC Will Not Allow Any Political Party Access To its Database

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said at the weekend that it will not allow any political party access to its data base containing biometric information of all registered voters.

INEC National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education Barrister Festus Okoye stated this while speaking on Channels TV‘s politics today.

He said all the parties have already been given copies of register of voters as well as their polling units in accordance with the provisions of the law.

Okoye also said that the Commission hopes to conclude reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) by Tuesday for deployment to the polling units.

He however said that any BVAS that fails to provide a backup system for the results of the Presidential and National Assembly election will not be reconfigured for the March 18 Governorship and Assembly elections.

While dismissing a backup plan for the IREV during the governorship election, Okoye said when there are challenges with upholding polling units results during the election, the ICT department is equipped to deal with such challenges.

On the controversy surrounding the posting of the Director ICT days before the election, Okoye said all Administrative Secretaries of the Commission are Directors adding that decision was taken in the best interest of the nation.

He said the decision was taken at a time when the commission was panicky about whether there were going to be new Resident Electoral Commission while preparing for elections.

He said at that stage the Commission needed to post it’s best hands to serve as Administrative Secretaries and manage the elections in the absence of the Resident Electoral Commissioners.

On the judgement directing the Commission to allow two individuals to vote with the Temporary Voters card, he said the commission has already filed an appeal as INEC is the only body allowed by law to determine what can be used for voting.

He said the slip given to the individuals during registration was to let know that they have been registered while the information the provided are being processed.

Source:- The Nation