The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, said that over 170,000 polling unit results from the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25 had been uploaded to its Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
Festus Okoye, the National Commissioner of INEC, said this in an interview on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics on Monday.
Okoye went on to say that the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) will be completed by Tuesday in preparation for the March 18 gubernatorial and state assembly elections.
“As of the last time,” he continued, “over 170,000 of those results had been uploaded.”
However, Okoye maintained that no political party would be permitted to examine the brain of the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems, which are used for voter accreditation and electronic transmission of votes.
“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 reality, the BVAS will not allow itself to be reconfigured or reset if the entire data is not transferred to the accreditation backend.
“I’m certain that by Tuesday, when we hope to complete resettling the BVAS for the gubernatorial and state assembly elections, the results in all of the areas where poll results were held would have been pushed to the accreditation backend.”
Every Nigerian, according to Okoye, has the constitutional and legal right to protest. Even so, he stated that no political party will be permitted to check the BVAS’s brain or voter biometrics.
He stated that INEC is the regulator of political parties and that the commission will not surrender its primary job to dissatisfied political parties.
He stated that the court decision allowing people to vote using temporary voter IDs does not apply to all Nigerians, but just to those who went to court.
In addition, the INEC commissioner accused political parties for making polling units “inaccessible” to voters, resulting in poor attendance at the past election.
He stated that INEC learned “important lessons” from the presidential and National Assembly elections that will be used to the gubernatorial and state assembly elections.
He stated that substantial efforts are being made to resolve concerns with the IReV portal ahead of the March 18 elections, and that the commission’s IT section 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 Electoral Act 2022 makes it clear that any registered political party, in conjunction with their candidates, has the right to send agents to every polling unit in Nigeria,” stated the INEC commissioner. The PDP as a political party sent out a total of 176,588 poll workers. The Labour Party used 134,874 polling agents in all. The NNPP deployed 176,200 units, while the APC deployed 176,223.
“The commission set up 176,666 polling units. As a result, political parties sent more agents to voting places than there were polling units. That is, each political party received a copy of Form EC 8, the polling unit result sheet, which is the result sheet that is uploaded into the IReV portal.
Disclaimer
The provided information is intended for general awareness and may not be entirely accurate or up-to-date. The post disclaims any warranties regarding the completeness, accuracy, or reliability of the content, services, or graphics on the website. It advises caution when using the information for any purpose.