The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed how results from polling units will be transmitted after the governorship and House of Assembly elections taking place across the federation today.
Speaking on Arise News yesterday, the Chairman of INEC’s Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said the Commission had learnt worthy lessons from the Presidential and National Assembly polls.
Okoye stressed that the law has prescribed a dual mode of either transmission of results or transfer of results.
He explained that the Presiding Officer who superintended the polling unit would enter the scores of the various political parties in form EC8A which is the polling unit-level result after the conclusion of elections in various units, adding that presiding officers must sign that particular and copies must be given to relevant stakeholders.
“The PO will sign that particular result sheet and stamp it, the PU agent or party agent if available will also countersign and copies will be given to them and the police.”
Okoye added: “That original result will be what will be scanned and uploaded to our INEC Result Viewing Portal for public viewing. Not only that, the accreditation data that have arisen from that polling unit will also be uploaded, but the physical result and the BVAS itself will also be taken to the Registration Area Collation centre.”
He also stressed that the Collation Officer would be able to verify the original results, the BVAS, have the benefit of looking at the accreditation data as transmitted and the result sheet as transmitted from the polling unit.
“That is the dual mode which the law has prescribed for the Commission and that is the mode that we’re going to use for the purpose of this election,” he said.
Okoye further stated that results would be transmitted on IREV as soon as the polls closed from various polling units.
“The Commission is determined to improve on its previous performance. What we have done is to learn valuable lessons from previous elections that we conducted, and we’re going to put those lessons into our planning purposes and processes, and into our deployment purposes.”
Okoye added that INEC is prepared to conduct the 28 governorship and 993 state assembly constituency elections.
“It’s a huge election and INEC will be paying very close attention to what is going on in the various states.”
The Commission has, however, been ordered to electronically transmit today’s Governorship and House of Assembly election results in accordance with its regulations and guidelines.
A Federal High Court, Abuja, gave the order on Friday.
Justice Obiora Egwuatu, in a judgment, also ordered the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to upload a scanned copy of the EC8A to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) immediately after the completion of all the polling units voting and results’ procedures in Akwa Ibom.
The commission was equally instructed by Justice Egwuatu to conspicuously paste the publication of its result posters EC60(E) at polling units after completing the EC8A result sheets in the state.
He equally ordered INEC to enforce the observance and compliance of Section 27(1) of the Electoral Act, 2022 in the distribution of electoral materials during the conduct of the polls in the state by engaging the services of independent, competent, and reliable logistic companies who are non-partisans or known supporters of any political for the distribution of electoral materials and personnel.
Egwuatu held that since the electoral umpire averred in its filed affidavit that it was aware of its responsibilities under the law and had not failed to carry them out, granting the prayers sought by the applicants would not do any harm to the commission but instead, energise its performance.
He gave the judgment following a suit filed by the Labour Party (LP) and its governorship candidate in Akwa Ibom, Uduakobong Udoh, including 13 state Houses of Assembly candidates for the March 18 elections.
The applicants, in the originating summons marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/334/2023 dated and filed on March 15 by their lawyer, Moses Usoh-Abia, had sued INEC as sole defendant.
The applicants, who sought seven reliefs, prayed the court for an order of mandamus compelling INEC and all its agents to comply with and enforce the provision of Clause 37 of the Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of the Saturday’s governorship and house of assembly elections in Akwa Ibom.
They also prayed the court to mandate the presiding officers of all polling units to conspicuously paste the publication of result posters EC460(E) at the polling units after completing the EC8A result sheets.
They sought an order of mandamus compelling the commission to mandate the presiding officers of all polling units in the state to electronically transmit or transfer the result of the polling units, direct to the collation system and use the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to upload a scanned copy of the EC8A to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) immediately after the completion of all the polling units voting and results procedures.
They said this was in compliance with the provision of Clause 38 of the guidelines for the conduct of the polls.
The applicants equally prayed for an order directing INEC to enforce the observance and compliance of Section 27(1) of the Electoral Act, 2022 in the distribution of electoral materials during the conduct of the polls by engaging the services of independent, competent, and reliable logistic companies who are non-partisans or known supporters of any political for the distribution of electoral materials and personnel, among other reliefs.
