The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has recently cited technical glitches as a reason for the delay in the uploading of election results.
INEC’s commissioner of information and voter education Festus Okoye in a statement released on Sunday stated that, unlike the off-season elections, the portal has been relatively slow and unsteady.
He however expressed regrets for any setbacks it has caused, due to how important the IRev is in the election results management process.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 14 (June 3 – Sept 2, 2024) begins registrations; get massive discounts with early registration here.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
PRESS RELEASE
Challenges Experienced With The INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) pic.twitter.com/MbTFXIqugP— INEC Nigeria (@inecnigeria) February 26, 2023
In his words,
“The problem is totally due to technical glitches related to scaling up of the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, state elections to one for managing of nationwide general elections. It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations.”
He further gave the assurance that the delays are not due to any sabotage of the INEC systems, noting that the IRev remains well-secured.
“We also wish to assure Nigerians that results from the Polling unit copies of which were issued to political parties are safe on both the BVAS and the IReV portal.
“These results cannot be tampered with, and any discrepancy between them and the physical results used in collation will be thoroughly investigated and remediated, in line with Section 65 of the Electoral Act 2022,” he added.
He concluded that the commission’s technical team is working effortlessly to solve all the outstanding problems, as users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since.
The delay in uploading the election results has caused so much frustration among Nigerians, which has seen most of them take to social media to express their anger.
While many have urged INEC to upload the results on the IRev as quickly as possible, reports reveal that most results of several polling units across the country were not uploaded almost 24 hours later.
Despite the claims of INEC that the results will not be sabotaged, many have speculated that the delay could be a means to tamper with the results.
A user @iheonucharles said, “Inec may be under pressure to compromise this election! Let’s lend our voices to avoid manipulation of the results !”
Another user @elshado66 said, “I was forced to share hotspots to ensure that these enemies of democracy upload the results of some polling units to the Inec server after they wanted to leave without uploading the results on the ground of a poor network in a satellite town.”
@ChukwunonsouUJ said, “INEC has been bought off….the results they will announce have been doctored. In my unit and other units in my ward, votes were not counted, rather Gov. Wike’s boys carried them here and asked everybody to leave including party agents.”
IReV, which stands for INEC Results Viewing Portal, is a platform that enables people to view election results in real time from various polling units across the country.
The IReV was put to use in the recent off-season elections, including the Ekiti and Osun governorship polls which gave credibility to the exercise. The portal is also backed by the 2022 Electoral Act which gives INEC the power to deploy appropriate technologies for the conduct of elections in the country.