The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has insisted that it won’t allow political parties check the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines (BVAS) and that the Electoral Act does not permit such.
Festus Okoye, INEC’s National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, stated this on Sunday night on Channels Television while reacting to the call by the Labour Party (LP) to check the BVAS.
According to him, every political party that deployed polling agents has a copy of the polling units level results and that if the parties insist that they want to look at the same thing their agents have, the Commission won’t grant the request.
Okoye said, “On the issue of a political party saying they want to come and look at our cloud, IReV or into the brain of the BVAS, the commission will not allow that to happen.
“Every political party that deploys polling agents has a copy of the polling units level results and if a political party now says they want to come into the commission to look at the same thing their agents have already, we won’t allow that to happen because the laws do not allow that.
“Look, the commission is the regulator of political parties and the political parties cannot, just because of so many things taking place, come around and wants to regulate the commission. The commission will now allow that to happen.”
He added that political parties planning to express their grievances through peaceful protest are welcome at the commission’s headquarters.
“In terms of the issue of protest, the commission is a public trust. And as far as the commission is concerned, any Nigerian who has any grievance has the constitutional and legal right to come to the commission to protest.
“The commission will not prevent any individual or group of individuals, any political party or association not to protest because the commission is a public trust and a public institution and we cannot prevent anybody from coming to protest,” Okoye revealed
