Ahead of the 2023 general election, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed the cancellation of differential accreditation and voting time frame.
Naija News reports that the electoral body said the move is to avoid any discrepancies between the number of accredited voters and the total votes cast.
The electoral umpire noted that in 2023, polls accreditation and voting would be done simultaneously, and there won’t be time differences between both exercises.
It would be recalled that in previous elections, voters were first accredited in the morning and then they returned to cast their votes at noon of the same day election.
However, INEC has stated that would no longer happen, as voters will now be allowed to vote immediately after they are accredited at their various polling units in the 2023 general elections.
According to INEC, it observed that some voters at various polling units across the federation get accredited in the morning but don’t come back to vote later at noon, a development which has caused a difference between the number of accredited voters and the total votes cast.
The commission’s spokesperson, Festus Okoye, who disclosed this on a programme on TVC said voters would now be allowed to cast their votes immediately after they must have been successfully accredited through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) only.
Okoye furthered that it is only the BVAS machine that would be used for accreditation of all voters on the election day as well as be used used to scan the results and send same electronically from the polling unit to the INEC portal.
The INEC spokesperson advanced that “We no longer do differential accreditation and voting. We do simultaneous accreditation and voting. The 2023 elections, it is going to be simultaneous accreditation and voting. We are not going to have a differential timeframe in terms of accreditation and voting.”
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