Flood affected over 4000 BVAS machines for Edo election — INEC chairman

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmoud Yakubu, says the flood disaster that hit some state recently affected over 4000 Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines at the commission’s office.

Yakubu disclosed this at the opening of a two-day induction retreat for Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) on Monday in Lagos.

The INEC chairman, however, said the commission had been able to recover no fewer than 3,500 of the machines.

The INEC Chairman said the machines in the state would not be enough for the election and that the commission would call for additional support from neighbouring states.

On the retreat, the INEC chairman said it was not just about induction of new appointees but an opportunity to review performance, reappraise processes, discuss innovations, and engage service providers.

He noted that it was also an opportunity to interface with lawmakers on critical areas of reform and explore new frontiers “in our continuous effort to improve organisational capacity for better service delivery.”

He continued: “In March 2022, we had an induction retreat for new National Commissioners, followed by another one on election logistics in October, and then another retreat for new RECs in November.

“The most recent retreat was held in August last year for the review of the 2023 general elections.

Today, we are holding another retreat to induct 10 new RECs: nine of them were sworn in on December 12, 2023, and one of them on January 30, 2024.”

The INEC boss said that in a matter of weeks after the swearing-in, many of the new RECs were saddled with the task of conducting re-run elections in a few locations in some constituencies or bye-elections in entire constituencies.

According to him, INEC will conduct four major elections before 2027, listing them as the Anambra, Ekiti, and Osun governorship elections.

“Therefore, as we think, reflect, and innovate for credible elections, we are also instantly implementing the reforms and innovations that we can introduce through administrative action.

“Since elections is a process governed by law, we also plan to intensify our engagement with the National Assembly for activities that require legal reform,” he said.