The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP) and some Civil Society Organisations such as Yiaga Africa Watching The Vote, Connected Development (CODE) and SituationRoom, Sunday urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to cause no further delay in uploading results of the presidential election in the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV).
The PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, in a statement Sunday in Abuja, urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu to instruct the collation officers to upload the results from the Polling Units to the INEC server immediately.
This, Atiku said, was necessary to checkmate some governors allegedly trying to compromise the results at the local government areas’ collation level.
“It will be a disservice to Nigerians and a negation to democracy for anyone to subvert the will of the people as freely expressed in their votes of yesterday,” Atiku said.
He called on Nigerians to be calm but vigilant to ensure that anti-democratic elements masquerading as progressives do not steal their mandate.
“And in what is already turning out to be a nail-biting race in the 2023 Nigerian presidential elections, early results from polling units and exit polls indicate that Atiku Abubakar is projected to become the first candidate to meet the mandatory 25% requirement of votes cast in at least 24 states.
According to the latest projections, Atiku is also set to exceed expectations in at least 10 states, where he is projected to garner over 40% of the votes cast,” it said.
Expressing his gratitude to the electorate, Atiku said: “We are humbled and honoured by the early projections, which indicate that the Nigerian people have seen in Atiku Abubakar the kind of leader that they want to lead them into a brighter future.
“While it is still too early to predict the final outcome of the elections, Atiku Abubakar’s early success has certainly put him in a strong position as the race enters its final stages.
“From the current figures that are available, Atiku is winning in many states in the 6 geo-political zones. We urge our members and party agents to remain steadfast and watchful.”
Yiaga Africa
Also at a press briefing Sunday, Yiaga Africa Watching The Vote said the delay in uploading the results undermines public confidence in the results transmission process as it deviates from the guidelines for the elections and it failed to meet citizens expectations.
Dr. Hussaini Abdu and Executive Director Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo said logistical shortfalls by INEC caused confusion and unacceptable delays in polling units opening – most notably in South-east and South-south geopolitical zones.
He said INEC uploaded only 25,503 results for the presidential elections on the INEC portal.
They said the failure of the IReV system, intended to enhance transparency could potentially impugn the integrity of the elections.
“As noted in the mid-day statement of February 25, party agents were sighted across most of the polling units with Yiaga Africa observers.
“During counting All Progressives Congress (APC) party agents were sighted at 97% of polling units, Labour Party (LP) polling agents were sighted at 67% of polling units, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) polling agents were sighted at 51% of polling units, and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at 99% of polling units,” they said.
They called on INEC to be transparent and communicate the challenges faced during the deployment of the IReV.
The group also called on INEC and security agencies to ensure proper security for citizens, especially the polling officials and collation officials especially as results collation progresses and as INEC commences the announcement of results to ensure that no life is further lost in these elections.
…CODE too
Also, Connected Development (CODE) Sunday expressed concern about the slow upload of results on the INEC result portal.
CODE Chief Executive Hamzat Lawal said this while briefing journalists in Abuja, noting that at this point, the result portal had only 40,000 polling units’ results.
He said “this is more disturbing as we are aware that INEC created over 50,000 new polling units with less than 100 registered voters in each of them, and elections was since concluded in all these polling units at 2:30pm yesterday and one would expect that by midnight of yesterday, all this polling units results should have been uploaded.
“This expectation is coming from the experience we observed in the Ekiti and Osun Gubernatorial elections, where we witnessed over 95 percent of the results uploaded before midnight on election day.
“The following are the highlights of the analysis that were published on the platform as at 12pm, 25th February, 2023: collation center, which had about 2.3% published on the UZABE platform, Security, which had about 1.7% of the published report, ballot issues, which had about 0.56% of the published report, polling station issues, which had about 66.95% published report and positive events, which had about 28.49% of the published report.
“Polling station issues that had the highest publication on UZABE had the following breakdown by geopolitical zones: SE – 11%, SW – 13.19%, NC – 19.15%, NE – 17.87%, NW – 23.4, SS – 14.47. We see that the northwest had the highest polling station issues.
“Positive events which had the second highest publishing on UZABE has the following breakdown by geopolitical zones: SE – 3%, SW – 10%, NC – 27%, NE – 13%, NW – 24%, SS – 23%.
“Connected Development and its partners are at this moment calling the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to indeed be independent and serve the people the constitution has mandated it to serve.
“Nigerians deserve efficiency, they deserve fairness, with people denying themselves sleep and keeping wake under the rain, Nigerians deserve better from public institutions.
“We are calling on INEC to address these issues immediately. We are also calling on the Nigerian police as the lead agency on election security to monitor.
“Lack of adequate information, access to independent observers and strict adherence to the electoral act of 2022 and the INEC’s guidelines will cause apprehension, a trust deficit that might lead to civil unrest and rejection of the overall outcome, and should be addressed immediately by the INEC chairman.”
SituationRoom
In their own observations, the SituationRoom called on INEC to be consistent with the legal framework and guidelines for elections, to be transparent and credible in the collation of results.
Convener Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room Ene Obi, Co-Convener Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room Asma’u Joda and Co-Convener Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room James Ugochukwu, in a joint second interim press statement on the assessment of the 2023 presidential election in Abuja, also enjoined INEC to take stock of polling units where election did not take place and make them public.
They also called for more vigilance by the security agencies in the post-election period, and urged political parties, their candidates and supporters to exercise restraint while awaiting collation of results and declaration of winners.
On election results to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), they observed that IReV portal did not go live on time; 0% of the presidential results were transmitted on the IReV portal as at 8pm.
“While results for the Senate and House of Representatives elections went live at about 4:00pm.
“We also received reports of INEC polling officials’ inability to access the IRev portal to upload the Presidential results in particular.
“Situation Room had expected that there will be a quick upload of results to improve and make the collation process more transparent as this has always been the weakest link in the electoral process.
“Furthermore, Situation Room notes that most of the Senatorial results uploaded were not legible.
“There were also reports of Presiding Officers who either refused or were unable to upload results,” they said.
On functionality of BVAS, they explained that networks of observers reported that the BVAS functioned satisfactorily in many polling units visited.
According to them, in 14 per cent of the polling units, there were glitches including failure of the device to start, failure to authenticate voters, discharge of battery, and intermittent power malfunctioning.
INEC explains
Reacting to the barrage of observations, INEC acknowledged the challenges with the IReV.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee Festus Okoye, won acknowledgement this in a statement Sunday, said the problem was totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, state elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections.
“The Commission is aware of challenges with the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV). Unlike in off-season elections where the portal was used, it has been relatively slow and unsteady. The Commission regrets this setback, especially because of the importance of IReV in our results management process.
“The problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, State elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections. It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations.
“Consequently, the Commission wishes to assure Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems, and that the IReV remains well-secured.
“Our technical team is working assiduously to solve all the outstanding problems, and users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since last night.
“We also wish to assure Nigerians that results from the Polling Units, copies of which were issued to political parties, are safe on both the BVAS and the IReV portal. These results cannot be tampered with and any discrepancy between them and the physical results used in collation will be thoroughly investigated and remediated, in line with Section 65 of the Electoral Act 2022.
“While we fully appreciate the concerns of the public on this situation and welcome various suggestions that we have received from concerned Nigerians, it is important to avoid statements and actions that can heat up the polity at this time or promote disaffection towards the Commission.
“We take full responsibility for the problems and regret the distress that they have caused the candidates, political parties and the electorate,” INEC said.
