By Ikenna Uwadileke
A pro democracy group, Diasporans for Good Governance (DGG) has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to subject its technological softwares to a multi-stakeholders integrity test.
The convener of the group, Mr Chima Christain made the call in a news conference on Wednesday in Abuja.
Christain emphasised that subjecting INEC technological softwares to audit was critical in view of the need to promote better management of elections in the country.
According to him, the softwares include the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the Automatic Biometric Identification System (ABIS) and the Voter Register.
“This will holistically address the challenges as seen with the invalidation of voters from some regions during the continuous voters registration exercise.
“Available data by INEC shows that out of the 2.78 million Nigerians that were invalidated by INEC, we noticed that 49.3 per cent are from the South-South and the South-East regions.
“While all regions had an average rejection rate of 17 per cent, the South-South and South-East had an average rejection rate of 35. 2 per cent.
“INEC said that it used the ABIS to do the exercise, but we found that the ABIS is not as credible and efficient as advertised.
“One key example is to be found in the voter register displayed. In that voter register Nigerians saw multiple incidences of underage registrations and outright fake registrations
“And DGG is saying that with a compromised voter register the elections cannot be credible and INEC is advertising ABIS as electronic software used to process all these registration requests.
“What the voter register is suggesting to us is that the ABIS is not as efficient as advertised because that same software has invalidated 1.8 million Nigerians out of which 49. 3 per cent are from two regions South East and South South.
“It curiously failed to track and eliminate the multiple incidences of under age voters as we can see on the voter register displayed.
“It is on this that we are calling on INEC and Nigerians to subject these systems to a multi stakeholders integrity test,’’ Christain said.