The Nigeria Police said it has released some men arrested on Tuesday for being in possession of the Bi-Modal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) machines in the Maitama area of Abuja.
The Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Olumuyiwa Adejobi, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday.
No cause for alarm: According to him, the men were released after it was discovered that they were working with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
While calling on the members of the public to discountenance reports of the arrest, Adejobi said operatives of the Force Intelligence Bureau (FIB) had visited the location, interviewed the occupants, and conducted a search of the house following a report by residents of the area of suspicious activities.
INEC contractors: According to him, in the course of the search, some electoral materials and BVAs machines were discovered in their possession.
- “When contacted, the Independent National Electoral Commission, confirmed that the occupants of the house are staff of Emperor Technology, outsourcing engineering services to INEC, and were immediately released,” he said.
He said the report was a false and misconstrued narrative, and therefore, called on the public to discountenance it. Adejobi urged reporters and media houses to endeavour to carry out due diligence and ascertain the veracity of information before spreading it, to avoid being victims of the “breaking news syndrome”.
He called on the public to avoid the creation and spread of misinformation and disinformation that could cause disaffection between the populace and state actors.
The backstory: The report that the Police arrested a ‘BVAS syndicate’ emanated from Arise TV news with a video of the BVAS machines in a bus. The report had trended on social media Tuesday night. While many social media users believed the arrested men might have been the brain behind the glitches in uploading election results from the polling units, some described it as an attempted cover-up for INEC’s inefficiencies
