INEC on Thursday restated that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) would be deployed for voter accreditation and transmission of results on the November 11 governorship poll in Bayelsa.

Resident electoral commissioner Obo Effanga gave the assurance at a news conference at the INEC office in Yenagoa.

Mr Effanga said almost all the non-sensitive materials were already in the local government areas. He explained that the sensitive materials would, on arrival, be warehoused at the Central Bank of Nigeria.

“Nothing has changed with the process of election in Nigeria. We are still going to conduct elections based on the provisions of the Constitution, Electoral Act and guidelines of INEC. After voting at the polling units, the votes will be counted there,” stated Mr Effanga. “They will be recorded in the physical result sheet. We will use the BVAS to take a snapshot of the results. They will be taken to the collation centre where the results are authenticated and the photograph that was taken will be uploaded onto the result viewing portal.”

The INEC official added, “Then from there, we move from the wards collation to the local government collation. From the local government collation, we come to the state collation centre. That is when the final collation is done, and the result is announced, and a winner is declared.”

Mr Effanga promised that INEC would strictly follow the guidelines for the election.

“Every vote will count. We will ensure that every personnel sent to the field are adequately qualified and knowledgeable about the processes of election. We will not interfere in any way to aid or assist anyone,” pledged the INEC commissioner. “Anybody that wants to win the election should be talking to the voters.”

(NAN)