By Kamil Opeyemi and Halimah Olamide
Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission has been caught in the web of its own technological glitch as controversies heightened on the release of the results of the presidential election held on Saturday.
The failure of the commission to upload the results of the exercise as required by the Electoral Act and promised severally by the INEC had emboldened critics of the commission to demand a halt in the process of announcement of the results manually.
INEC’s portal, which ought to have been updated every second with release of results from each of the 176,846 polling units across the federation, was noted to have failed to come up with results many hours after the election.
NPO Reports observed that as at 8:49am on Tuesday, four days after the election was held, only results from 79, 927 polling units had been posted on the INEC iREV portal.
This had led to political parties, especially the Labour and Peoples Democratic Party to make allegations of compromise against the commission.
However, what was thought would be
On Monday, agent of the PDP, Senator Dino Melaye, had created scene at the collation centre when he demanded for the electronic display of the results uploaded which he argued would make it easier for agents to monitor, raise questions and verify the credibility of the entire process.
“Mr. Chairman, INEC swore to Nigerians and the law also says that you must transmit the results of the elections electronically. Billions of Nigerians’ taxpayers’ money, including mine, was spent to put the technology in place for INEC to give Nigerian electronic transmission of results. You cannot come here to tell us that you cannot transmit the results for us to see,” Melaye had said.
Responding, INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmud Yakubu, who accused Melaye, of being disruptive of the collation process, said whoever had issues with the process being adopted by the commission should wait till the end and make his submission which would be looked into according to the law.
The submission of the INEC boss had infuriated Melaye and some other parties who then staged a walk out from the collation centre.
But INEC’s spokesman, Festus Okoye, had been quoted once to have indicated that the collation of results would still be essentially manual.
“Section 60(5) of the Act makes it mandatory that the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including the total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot in a manner prescribed by the commission. Thereafter, the presiding officer shall after recording and announcing the results deliver the same along with election materials under security and accompanied by the candidates or their polling agents, where available to such person as may be prescribed by the commission.
“The implication of this is that the collation process of results is still essentially manual, but the collation officer must collate subject to his verification and confirmation that the number of accredited voters stated on the collated result are correct and consistent with the number of accredited voters recorded and transmitted directly from polling units,” Mr.Okoye had said.
He had however come under heavy criticisms when he made the statement in August of 2022.
A sum of N117bn was said to have spent on technology alone by INEC.
Dele Farotimi, a public affairs analyst said on an Arise TV programme on Tuesday that “INEC has failed in this exercise.”
He said there is no way the credibility of the poll can be salvaged adding that the commission has been compromised.
“We believed in this system. Because they brought BIVAS and assured that votes would be transmitted electronically. Now, they have failed woefully,” Farotimi said