The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday said over 170,000 polling unit results of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections have been uploaded on its Result Viewing Portal (IReV).

The Commission also said the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) would be completed by Tuesday in preparation for the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.

“As at the last time, over 170,000 of those results have been uploaded,” INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye, stated on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics.

“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 fact, the BVAS will not allow itself to be reconfigured or reset if the entire data is not pushed to the accreditation backend.

“I’m sure that by Tuesday when we hope to complete the resettling of the BVAS for the purposes of the governorship and state assembly elections, the results in all the places where elections were conducted would have been pushed to the accreditation backend.”

Okoye said every Nigerian has the constitutional and legal right to protest. However, he said no political party will be allowed to look into the brain of the BVAS or the biometrics of voters.

He said the court judgement that voters could use their temporary voter cards to vote is not applicable for all Nigerians but for the individuals who went to court.
The INEC commissioner also blamed political parties for making polling units “inaccessible” for voters, leading to low turnout at the last polls.

He said INEC learned some “valuable lessons” in the presidential and National Assembly elections, which would be used in the governorship and state assembly polls.

He said serious efforts are being made to rectify challenges with IReV portal ahead of the March 18 polls, adding that the ICT department of the commission knows what to do if there are issues with the uploading of polling unit results on the IReV portal in March 18 polls.

He said political parties deployed more polling unit agents than the number of officials deployed by the Commission and so they monitored their results per polling units.

The INEC commissioner said, “The Electoral Act 2022 makes it clear that every registered political party in conjunction with their candidates have the right to send agents to every polling units in Nigeria. The PDP as a political party deployed a total of 176,588 polling agents. The Labour Party deployed a total of 134,874 polling agents. The NNPP deployed a total of 176,200 while the APC deployed a total of 176,223.

“The commission deployed to 176,666 polling units. So, the political parties deployed more agents to the polling units than the number of polling units that opened. What that means is that each political party got a copy of Form EC 8 which is the polling unit result sheet which is the result sheet that is uploaded into the IReV portal.”

Political Parties Can’t Regulate INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission has disclosed that political parties cannot serve as a watchdog to the electoral umpire’s activities.

The INEC National Commissioner and Chairman of Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, who said this yesterday’s night, explained that the commission had been created to serve as a regulator for political parties and not the other way round.

Recall that the  Labour Party on March 10th, said the electoral umpire deliberately came up with its idea of reconfiguring BIVAS after its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, sought to examine the election materials.

The party also faulted the commission’s claim of backing up the data retrieved from the BVAS without the presence of independent witnesses and representatives of political parties.

Speaking while featuring on Channels TV’s Politics Today, Okoye insisted that the request by the Labour Party to monitor the commission’s process of reconfiguring and backing up results on its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System machines would not be granted.

“On the issue of a political party saying they want to come and look at our cloud, IReV or into the brain of the BIVAS, the commission will not allow that to happen.

“Every political party that deploys polling agents has a copy of the polling units level results and if a political party now says they want to come into the commission to look at the same thing their agents have already, we won’t allow that to happen because the laws do not allow that.

“Look, the commission is the regulator of political parties and the political parties cannot, just because of so many things taking place, come around and wants to regulate the commission. The commission will now allow that to happen,” Okoye said.

He also added that parties and individuals planning to make known their grievances through peaceful protest over the conduct of February 25, 2023 presidential poll will be welcome at the commission’s headquarters.

“In terms of the issue of protest, the commission is a public trust. And as far as the commission is concerned, any Nigerian who has any grievance has the constitutional and legal right to come to the commission to protest.

“The commission will not prevent any individual or group of individuals, any political party or association not to protest because the commission is a public trust and a public institution and we cannot prevent anybody from coming to protest,” he added.