Billy Tafawa Balewa lauds INEC boss for technological innovations, optimistic of improvement

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Billy Tafawa Balewa, a grandson of the Late Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa has commended the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu for introduction of technologies in the conduct of elections and voter registration.

Tafawa Balewa in a statement issued on Thursday, believed that although the current system is not a perfection but a “work in progress”. He argued that the electoral umpire boss needs encouragement not condemnation as it is being done in some quarters.

According to him, a recent remarks by a former Director General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN), Dr. Ladan Salihu claimed that “INEC has not lived up to the expectations of Nigerians” and that “nothing has changed”.

He said that previous elections failed to acknowledge the significant, data-backed, and courageous reforms that have transformed the electoral landscape under Professor Yakubu’s stewardship.

“While elections in Nigeria remain a work in progress as they are in every democracy, the assertion that INEC has ‘missed out on history’ is not only inaccurate but dismissive of the monumental steps taken to safeguard electoral integrity.

“A groundbreaking technological shift, one of the most revolutionary achievements under Professor Yakubu, has been the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV). 

“These innovations mark a decisive break from Nigeria’s history of ballot stuffing, multiple voting, and result manipulation.

BVAS eliminated the long-standing issue of ghost and multiple voting by introducing biometric accreditation, ensuring that only eligible and present voters could cast their votes.

“IReV, for the first time in Nigeria’s electoral history, enabled near real-time public access to polling unit results, introducing a level of transparency previously unimaginable,” he said.