INEC Boss, Mahmood Yakubu
Anxiety is palpably high across the country as Nigerians await results of the presidential and the national assembly elections, over 24 hours after the voting exercise.
But the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Professor Mahmood Yakubu, has assured the Nigerian people that the process of collation and announcement would be transparent, even as INEC has explained that the challenges the commission was encountering with the transmission of results was not due to sabotage of its system.
At the same time, INEC, yesterday, announced the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, as the winner of the presidential election in Ekiti State, after polling 201,494 votes, to defeat his closest rival, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who scored 89,554 votes.However, Atiku Abubakar returned that favour by defeating Tinubu in Katsina State, the President’s home state, though by a small margin. The former vice president polled 489,045 votes while Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), scored 482,283 votes.The INEC state Collation Officer and Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Gusau, Zamfara State, Mu’azu Abubakar, announced the result at a Collation Centre in Katsina, Monday morning.
This, nonetheless, INEC has conducted election into the remaining 141 polling units in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State the presidential and national assembly elections were rescheduled, just as more and more results in the presidential and legislative elections had started to come in.Meanwhile, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), has weighed in on the controversies trailing weekend’s presidential and national assembly elections in some states, cautioning the INEC and security agencies against colluding to subvert people’s will.
Yakubu, who allayed fears of manipulation, said during one of his briefings yesterday, that everything concerning the collation of the results and announcement would be done that in the open at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.However, INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, in a statement said the Commission was aware of challenges with the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV).
The commission noted that unlike in the off-season elections, where the portal was used, it has been relatively slow and unsteady, stressing that the Commission regretted the setback, especially, because of the importance of IReV in its 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 election. 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,” he said.
While further assuring the people that its technical team was working assiduously to solve all the outstanding problems, he added that the users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since last night.His words: “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.”The commission said while it fully appreciated the concerns of the public on this situation and welcomed various suggestions that it had received from concerned Nigerians, it was important to avoid statements and actions that could heat up the polity at this time or promote disaffection towards the Commission.The commission, therefore, accepted full responsibility for the problems and regretted the distress they might have caused the candidates, political parties and the electorate.
