18 political parties are set to contest the Anambra Gubernatorial election in The state.
With over 4 million population, the state has about 2.5 million registered voters
There are 5,720 Polling Units (PUs) across the state.
There are a total of 18 candidates who want to succeed the outgoing governor, Willie Obiano.
Some of the candidates contesting to succeed Governor Willie Obiano are Chukwuma Soludo of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA, Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress APC, Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples Democratic Party PDP, Ifeanyi Uba of the Young Progressive Party YPP, and Ben Etiaba of the Action Alliance.
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What is BVAS?
INEC Chairman, Information and Voter Committee, Festus Okoye, revealed during an interview with AriseTV that the body will be deploying the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for the Anambra gubernatorial election which is slated for November 6.
The BVAS can be described as a system that will combine fingerprint and face biometrics for identity verification of voters.
As explained by the top official, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System integrates the three-stage voting process.
It is an integrated device that is multifunctional in nature, which serves as Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) during voter registration, voter accreditation on Election Day and also functions as INEC Results Viewing Device (IReV Device) to be used for election results upload on Election Day.
Integrated into the INEC Voter Enrollment Device, the BVAS will combine fingerprint and facial authentication to ensure that the person holding the PVC is the one that will vote.
Having been described as a “technological convergence”, the BVAS, which performs the functions of both the Smart Card Reader and Z-Pad will ensure fingerprint authentication during the accreditation of voters and eliminate any need for the filing of incident forms.
Okoye, during the interview, said, “What INEC did is called a technological convergence. An enrollment device is what is being used for the continuous voters’ registration. In the Anambra election, this device will become the bimodal voters accreditation system which will be used to verify the biometrics of the voter.
“This will now transform into a Z-pad which will be used for upload of results. It is a three-in-one device. The smart card reader has been phased out. INEC is embarking on massive voter education via the radio and the television.”
The BVAS which was deployed in the September 23 Isoko South State Assembly Constituency bye-election in Delta State, was said to have recorded a 97% progress.
Several countries of the world and in Africa are adopting the biometric systems such as the BVAS to ensure a fair and efficient election.
These systems, according to biometric update, include identification solutions for voter registration, voting, tallying and identification. Common modalities include fingerprint recognition, palm vein recognition, iris recognition and facial recognition. Mobile voting systems are also included.
It is important to note that biometrics in election processes allow the capture and recognition of unique physical characteristics, whether fingerprints (also hand geometry or palmprints), iris, face, voice, signature, or some patterns of behaviour.
A good example of success recorded was from the general elections held in Ghana on December 7, 2020. In a release by Neurotechnology, a company that specialises in high-precision biometric identification and object recognition technologies, revealed that its MegaMatcher Automatic Biometric Identification System (ABIS), were used for Ghana’s Biometric Voter Management System, providing voter registration, deduplication, adjudication, final voter list generation and verification. Dubawa
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