The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced on Sunday that over 170,000 polling unit results from the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25, 2023 had been uploaded to its Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
In addition, the Commission stated that the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) would be completed by Tuesday in time for the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.
“As at the last time, over 170,000 of those results have been uploaded,” INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye said during a program monitored by BizWatch Nigeria.
“As you are aware, we are reconfiguring the BVAS for purposes of the governorship and state assembly elections, and any BVAS that was used for the presidential and National Assembly elections that do not push to the accreditation backend, the data relating to the conduct of the presidential and National Assembly elections will not be reconfigured.
“In fact, the BVAS will not allow itself to be reconfigured or reset if the entire data is not pushed to the accreditation backend.
“I’m sure that by Tuesday when we hope to complete the resettling of the BVAS for the purposes of the governorship and state assembly elections, the results in all the places where elections were conducted would have been pushed to the accreditation backend.”
Every Nigerian, according to Okoye, has the constitutional and legal right to protest. However, he stated that no political party will be permitted to examine the BVAS’s brain or voter biometrics.
He stated that INEC is the regulator of political parties and that the commission will not abdicate its primary responsibility to dissatisfied political parties.
He stated that the court decision allowing voters to vote using temporary voter cards does not apply to all Nigerians, but only to those who went to court.
INEC blames political parties
In addition, the INEC commissioner blamed political parties for making polling units “inaccessible” to voters, resulting in low turnout at the last election.
He stated that INEC learned “valuable lessons” from the presidential and National Assembly elections that would be applied to the governorship and state assembly elections.
He stated that serious efforts are being made to resolve issues with the IReV portal ahead of the March 18 polls, and that the commission’s ICT department is aware of what to do if there are issues with the uploading of polling unit results on the IReV portal during the March 18 polls.
He stated that political parties used more polling unit agents than the Commission did, and that they tracked their results by polling unit.
The INEC commissioner said, “The Electoral Act 2022 makes it clear that every registered political party in conjunction with their candidates have the right to send agents to every polling units in Nigeria.
“The PDP as a political party deployed a total of 176,588 polling agents. The Labour Party deployed a total of 134,874 polling agents. The NNPP deployed a total of 176,200 while the APC deployed a total of 176,223.
“The commission deployed to 176,666 polling units. So, the political parties deployed more agents to the polling units than the number of polling units that opened.
“What that means is that each political party got a copy of Form EC 8 which is the polling unit result sheet which is the result sheet that is uploaded into the IReV portal.”
