Nigerians in Diaspora sad over INEC’s failure to transmit results

Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation (NIDO) have expressed displeasure with the systematic failure of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ensure instantaneous transmission of results to IReV after voting at polling units as originally planned by INEC.

NIDO Chairman Americas, Dr. Ezekiel Macham and his counterpart in Europe Dr. Bashir Obasekola stated this while addressing Journalists in Jos on the report of the 2023 election observers mission of Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation worldwide on the presidential and National assembly advised INEC and all the pertinent stakeholders to take urgent action to address this lapses identified to improve the conduct of subsequent elections.

They argued that it is very important that as they move into future elections, INEC must seek an amendment to its Electoral Act to allow electronic transmission and automated collation through direct submission of results in numerical format from the polling units into the INEC server.

Our correspondent reports that NIDO worldwide deployed 57 election observers to polling units in some selected towns and locations in different states geo-political zones of the country which include Enugu, Lagos, Plateau, Ogun, Benue, Kaduna, Cross River, Delta, Edo states, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja

The duo pointed out that the submitted results must be free of human intervention, which occurs by way of the manual addition of numbers while the automated tallied results should be live and accessible to the nation as the voting progresses adding that the scanned hard copy evidence of Form EC8A transmitted via BVAS will be used only to back up the raw data submitted from the polling units.

They also explained that after the manual input of the results into BVAS, the presiding INEC officer was expected to immediately transmit the data into the INEC Result Viewing portal (IReV) as stated in the electoral guidelines, but lamented that this was not done in the polling units observed the development led to tension and suspicion among those who were present at the polling unit.

NIDO further noted that the timeliness of the polling units observed nationwide was a mixture of punctuality and lateness in the opening and start of the voting exercise stressing that the tardiness of INEC officials was largely responsible for the lateness in the commencement of voting in many of these places as polling units officials and materials did not arrive at the scheduled commencement time of 8:39 am.

Nigerians in Diaspora further noted that the principal legal instruments for the election process in Nigeria are the 1999 Constitution as amended, the Electoral Act 2022 as amended, and INEC guidelines expressly, the electoral Act 2022 is adjudged as a progressive law with many innovative introductions and the use of technology.

They commended the 9th assembly on the new electoral Act, which positively inspired the voter’s expectations regarding the Fairness and transparency of the electoral process in the country.