How BVAS machines failed during presidential poll – INEC officials

Three Presiding Officers of the Independent National Electoral Commission said the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines suddenly stopped working on February 25 when it was time to transmit results of the presidential election.

They spoke on Monday as witnesses at the Presidential Election Petition Court in Abuja.

 They were testifying in the case a former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, filed to nullify President Bola Tinubu’s election.

The witnesses however said they were able to transmit the results of the National Assembly election held on the same day, using the BVAS machines.

They said their repeated efforts to electronically transmit results of the presidential Poll to INEC’s IReV portal, failed.

The three witnesses; Janet Nuhu Turaki, Christopher Bulus Ardo and Victoria Sani, told the court that they conducted the presidential election as Presiding Officers, at Yobe, Bauchi and Katsina states, respectively.

Led in evidence-in-chief by a member of Atiku’s legal team, Mr. Eyitayo Jegede, SAN, the witnesses, told the court that “technical glitches” they experienced with the BVAS machines, frustrated their jobs on election day.

They insisted that the problem of technical hitch arose at the point of transmitting only the presidential poll results.

The first witness, Turaki, told the court that the accreditation of voters with the BVAS machine went successfully, stressing that the electoral process became frustrating for her, at the point she wanted to upload the election results.

However, she told the court that she carefully collated the result of the presidential election in the polling unit she served and recorded the same in INEC’s form EC8A, after which she signed the document alongside agents of all the political parties.

In his own evidence, Ardo told the Court that he felt unfulfilled in his assignment with INEC on the election because he could not transmit the presidential election results as required by law.

The witnesses said they at the end of the presidential poll submitted a report to INEC enumerating the challenge they faced with the BVAS machines.

While Mr Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, appeared for INEC, President Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress, was represented by Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, and Mr Charles Edosomwan, SAN, respectively.

The Justice Tsammani-led five-member panel of the court adjourned further hearing in the matter till Tuesday