The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised Nigerians that polling unit results will be uploaded real-time on the Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in the days leading up to the November 11, 2023 off-season governorship elections in Kogi, Bayelsa, and Imo states.
INEC’s Acting Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Mary Nkem, stated this on Channels Television’s People’s Townhall on Election Security in Abuja on Sunday night.
The official stated that all of the problems encountered during the general elections earlier this year had been resolved.
She stated that INEC has made many measures to ensure the early deployment of sensitive materials to polling units as well as ad hoc personnel sleeping near voting units a day before the exercise.
“Rather than people moving from the local government headquarters to the various polling units, they are moved closer to the PUs (polling units) where they are going to work. So, I can assure you that God willing, we will deploy early,” Nkem said.
According to her, sensitive materials will be moved from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) vaults to Kogi, Bayelsa, and Imo by Monday.
The official also said the Commission conducted mock accreditation some three weeks ago in all three states “to confirm the functionality of the BVAS, accredit voters as well as upload of polling unit results to the IreV and these were optimally carried out”.
Asked whether the challenges with the IReV in the 2023 presidential election earlier in February had been identified and resolved, going into the three off-cycle governorship polls, the INEC official said, “Sure, we had a post-election review, and all of these things that went wrong were identified.
“Well, there was a glitch, technology (glitch), and it will interest you (to know) that if you go to the IReV now, all those results are on the IReV. It is just that they could not be uploaded in real-time, but they were uploaded later on, and we can assure Nigerians.”
This assurance, she added, was because “even the mock exercise that we conducted, within two hours, all the results were on the IReV”.
Nkem encouraged all political parties with candidates in the forthcoming polls to have records of the results of all the polling units to monitor collation.