IN the aftermath of judgement by the Osun State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has provided clarifications on the discrepancy related to the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
The tribunal ruling on Friday nullified the election of Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) Ademola Adeleke amid over-voting and additional votes for Adegboyega Oyetola (All Progressives Congress) putting him ahead of Adeleke.
A former Director, Voter Education and Publicity, INEC, Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi said there should not have been a discrepancy in the 2022 Osun State governorship election.
Osaze-Uzzi explained that the APC obtained a certified copy of the initial server report before some of the data had been transmitted by the BVAS hardware.
He, however, pointed out that the verdict was not a unanimous judgement.
“The second [tribunal] member – the honourable justice who dissented from his two colleagues – said, ‘I would rather use the primary source of this information, and the primary source of this data is actually the machine itself,’” the INEC official said.
“It is basically a computer. So, rather than go to the server where it transmitted data, I would use the printout from the machine itself.
“The machines were tendered, so were the reports from the server, and there ought not to have been a discrepancy, but somewhere along the line, not all the data had been transmitted at the time the APC obtained the certified copy of the initial server report.”
Osaze-Uzzi, however, described the judgement as a validation of the role BVAS has played in enhancing the electoral process.
