Osun Guber: Educate voters on new electoral innovations — Yiaga Africa charges journalists

Civil society group Yiaga Africa has called on journalists in Osun State to enlighten voters about the new electoral innovations for Saturday's governorship election. Samson Itodo, Yiaga Africa's Executive Director, made the appeal during a workshop for journalists on Election Results Management in Osogbo. One of the innovative changes, under the 2026 Electoral Act, involves the electronic upload and backup of election results via the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS.

This new process, known as e-EC8A, allows the Presiding Officer at a polling station to electronically transfer the recorded results from the traditional INEC Form EC8A to the BVAS. Itodo stressed that this method has never been used in Osun State before, making it crucial for voters to be educated about the procedure. He noted that voters could raise objections or seek clarification during the implementation of the new process.

Yiaga Africa urged journalists to monitor Presiding Officers during the result upload to verify that the electronically entered figures matched those on the physical EC8A sheet. Additionally, Itodo emphasized that voters must be properly registered with their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and should be inspected before voting to ensure no pre-loaded accreditation data exists on the BVAS machines.

He also advised voters to check that Presiding Officers publicly display the results of each polling unit, as required by electoral law, and that these results are uploaded to INEC's Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV) for public viewing.