INEC Acting Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Mary Nkem, on Channels Television’s People’s Townhall on Election Security on Sunday, November 5, 2023 in Abuja
With days to the November 11, 2023 off-season governorship polls in Kogi, Bayelsa and Imo states, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has assured Nigerians that polling unit results will be uploaded real-time on the Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
The Commission’s Acting Director, 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 said all the glitches experienced during the general elections earlier in the year had been taken care of.
She said INEC has put a lot of plans in place to guarantee early deployment of sensitive materials to polling units including ad hoc officers camping near polling 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, Bayesla and Imo by Monday.
The official also said the Commission conducted mock accreditation some three weeks ago in all the 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 thing that went wrong were identified.”
“Well, there was a glitch, technology, and it will interest you that if you go to the IReV now, all of those results on the IReV. Just that they could not be uploaded real-time but they were uploaded later on and we can assure Nigerians, because even the mock that we conducted, within two hours, all the results were on the IReV,” she added.
Nkem encouraged all political parties with candidates in the forthcoming polls to have records of results of all the polling units to monitor collation.