As part of its growing desire to integrate technology into Nigeria’s electoral process, the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC might in the foreseeable future adopt the use of body odour for voter verification.
Some years ago, voters were verified by simply looking at their paper cards and checking the voter register. In 2012 however, INEC introduced the Smart Card Readers to verify the Permanent Voter Cards PVCs which contained the facials of voters.
It was the period that INEC also used the Automated Facial Identification System AFIS to clean up the voter register.
As politicians developed ways of subverting the procedure, the electoral umpire went a step further to introduce the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS which verifies both the facials and the fingerprints. This development also entails INEC using the Automated Biometric Identification System ABIS.
However, speaking at the Chatham House in London, INEC Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu hailed the commission’s in-house engineers for the design of the BVAS and for always coming up with innovative ideas and designs to enhance the electoral process.
According to him, an engineer at the commission had proposed using body odour to verify voters but that he had to ask them to tarry awhile. VANGUARD
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