INEC Debunks Chidi Nwafor Invented BVAS; Says Transfer To Enugu An Elevation

By Charles Igbo

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has  debunked the claims that its former Director of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Engr Chidi Nwafor invented the BVAS.

It, also, described as laughable the notion that his transfer to Enugu as the Administrative Secretary, was responsible for the crisis with BVAS, and that had he not been transferred, there could have been no breakdown of the Apps during the Presidential Election of February 25, 2023.

Laughable, too, according to INEC, is the erroneous belief that making Nwafor an Administrative Secretary was a demotion. It explained that it was, actually, an elevation, as the Administrative Secretary is INEC’s second-in-command in Enugu State.

Rotimi Oyekanmi,  Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, explained this on Thursday in Abuja in reaction to claims that Nwafor was the inventor of the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System

Contrary to the claim, Oyekanmi said that BVAS was neither an invention of Nwafor nor that of any single staff member of INEC. BVAS, according to him, is a baby of INEC which created the  idea and invented it, just as it did the rested Smart Card Reader (SCR).

He said: “Having decided to invent the BVAS, the Commission gave the assignment to the most relevant Department within the Commission, namely the ICT, to bring the idea into fruition.

“The ICT Department is populated by a sizable number of brilliant Engineers and IT experts, who worked very hard, as a team, for several months to successfully actualize the Commission ’s dream.

“After completing the assignment of designing the BVAS, the ICT Department notified the commission.

“Therefore, it is improper to insinuate that a former Director of ICT, or any other staff for that matter single-handedly designed the BVAS.”

He added that  if anyone deserves commendation for the invention of BVAS, it should be Chairman, Yakubu, who makes the final decisions and INEC which conceived the idea.

On the claims that Nwafor’s transfer to Enugu was responsible for the glitches with the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in the Feb. 25 presidential election, Oyekanmi dismissed it as attempt to mislead and deceive the public.

His words: “First, the IReV and Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) are two separate entities, and they are independent of each other.

“The relationship between the two is that the BVAS is used to transmit the picture of Form EC8A, which is the Polling Unit Result Sheet in PDF format, as well as the Voters’ Accreditation Data to the IReV.

“Therefore, the glitches suffered by the IReV for some hours on Feb. 25 could not have affected the functionality of the BVAS, which in any case, performed its duty excellently on election day.

“There’s also a provision for the BVAS to transmit the Polling Unit (PU) results in offline mode if there is no network at the polling unit at the time of the activity.

He said that Nwafor’s presence could not have stopped the glitches.

He noted: “Recently, Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter had serious glitches that prevented many people, including me, from using those applications for many hours.

“But, eventually, the respective companies surmounted the challenges.

“Now, would you say that the glitches occurred just because one Engineer resigned from, or was transferred, within the company? Of course not.”

Oyekanmi praised Nwafor as brilliant, but pointed out that the Commission also boasts of other brilliant minds.

“While the former ICT Director is indeed a respected, brilliant employee who played his role satisfactorily, there are equally other staff members within the Commission that could effectively play his former role.”

He debunked the claims that Nwafor’s transfer to Enugu State as Administrative Secretary was a demotion. On that, he pointed out:

“Again, contrary to this impression that the position of Administrative Secretary is a demotion, I would say that it is an elevation.

“The administrative Secretary at our State office is the most senior staff there, second only to the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC).

“It’s like the role of a Permanent Secretary in a Federal Parastatal.

“When the REC is not around, the Administrative Secretary becomes an Acting Rec. That’s how important the position is.”

Not a few Nigerians hold the  view that Nwafor invented the BVAS, and was deliberately transferred to Enugu a few months to the election, to give room for manipulation of the App during the General Elections.