British Envoy Says BVAS Considerably Reduced Over-voting During Nigeria’s Elections

Ben Llewellyn-Jones, the British deputy high commissioner to Nigeria, says the bimodal voting accreditation system (BVAS) reduced over-voting in the recently concluded elections.

The United Kingdom, in a radio interview on Sunday, said there were huge improvements in the election as compared to other polls in previous years.

He hailed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for promptly uploading results to the election result viewing portal during the governorship polls.

“Every election must be looked at in terms of the time perspective. From 1999 to 2023, there are huge improvements. The BVAS technology did reduce the amount of over-voting considerably. There was improvement even in the three weeks between the presidential and gubernatorial. And INEC performance, the IRev upload worked much more quickly dramatically than it had, which is good to see,” Llewellyn-Jones said.

“We had a competition in a way that perhaps we have never seen before, the three party candidates during the presidential and more than three candidates in the gubernatorial elections, outside the three big parties.”