The FactChecker

What You Need To Know About Bimodal Voter Accreditation System

By Elizabeth Ogunbamowo

The importance of technology in human lives cannot be underestimated. Our realities have been greatly influenced by technological advancements, particularly in the 21st century.

Technology affects the way individuals interact with one another on a daily basis. It can also be said that technology has affected every other aspect of human life: health, education, finances among others.

The fusion between technology and governance starts in many parts of the world, particularly at the electioneering process.

The deployment of technology in different countries of the world to the electioneering process has recorded an enormous impact.

In the world today, most electoral management bodies around the world use new technologies with the aim of improving the electoral process. Some of the technology employed by these bodies include basic office automation tools such as word processing and spreadsheets to more sophisticated data processing tools, such as database management systems, optical scanning and geographic information systems.

Government and politics impact nearly every aspect of human lives ranging from the amount of tax an individual pays to the kinds of household items they can possess.

Voting on its part is the process of selecting a candidate for a political position. It is one of the electioneering processes.

Elections in Nigeria

With an over 210 million population, Nigerians go to the polls every four years to choose their representatives at the local, state and federal government levels.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, the apex body for election conduct in the country, has been saddled with the responsibility of overseeing the electioneering process while ensuring credibility.

However, despite efforts of the commission to keep the electoral process as transparent as possible, there have been widespread reports of electoral malpractice aided sometimes with violence.

Therefore, INEC had over the years sought for the deployment of technological innovation to improve the credibility and safety of the electoral process in Nigeria.

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Tip of The Week

#FakeNewsAlert

There’s precious little that we can do about the barrage of misinformation that we see daily, but there’s a lot we can do together if we learn to identify suspicious claims in the news and refrain from fuelling the fire by spreading them! Here are our top picks of likely-to-be-false news which [sadly] couldn’t be fact-checked.

CLAIM: Don’t use Makeup On Election Day, INEC Tells Anambra Women

SOURCE: NewsMedia NG

According to a news site, NewsMediaNG, supposedly quoting the Independent National Electoral Commission, women in Anambra states should not wear makeup to the polling units. The report states that the makeup might prevent the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the technology to be deployed by INEC for the November 6th elections, from capturing voters’ faces during the poll.

Questions to ask yourself: Is this message truly from INEC? Where and when did the agency make such announcements? Which credible platform has published this claim?

What you should do: Verify before passing this message on.