In anticipation of the upcoming off-season governorship polls in Kogi, Bayelsa, and Imo states on November 11, 2023, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised the real-time uploading of polling unit results on the Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
Mary Nkem, the Acting Director of Voter Education and Publicity, confirmed this during an interview on Channels Television’s People’s Townhall on Election Security in Abuja on Sunday.
Nkem emphasized that the technical issues encountered during the previous general elections earlier in the year have been rectified. INEC has implemented various measures to ensure the smooth deployment of sensitive materials to polling units, with ad hoc officers positioned near the units a day prior to the election.
“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.
Highlighting the preparations, Nkem mentioned the transfer of sensitive materials from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) vaults to the respective states of Kogi, Bayelsa, and Imo, scheduled for Monday.
Furthermore, the Commission conducted a successful mock accreditation exercise in all three states three weeks prior to the polls. This aimed to validate the functionality of the Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), ensuring the seamless accreditation of voters and the timely uploading of polling unit results on the IReV.
This is
“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,” she noted.
Addressing concerns regarding the challenges faced by the IReV during the 2023 presidential election in February, Nkem affirmed that a comprehensive post-election review was conducted. Identified issues were duly addressed to prevent their recurrence during the upcoming off-cycle governorship polls.
“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”.
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Nkem urged all political parties fielding candidates in the upcoming elections to maintain comprehensive records of polling unit results for effective collation monitoring.
