INEC Ready To Transmit Off-Cycle Governorship Election Results Electronically

Ahead of the 11th of November 2023 Governorship election in Kogi, Imo, and Bayelsa states, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, is gearing up for an hitch-free polls.

After presenting copies of the voters’ register of political parties taking part in the election a few days ago as stipulated by law, officials of the Commission were out on the field to test-run the Accreditation of voters as a prelude to the actual process on election day.

INEC Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu led a delegation of INEC officials and the media to supervise and assess the mock accreditation exercise in Kogi state northcentral Nigeria.

Professor Mahmood who spoke to journalists after visiting some polling units,  explained the method of accreditation and transmission of election results as provided by law.

“The method as provided by law, is electronic accreditation, electronic upload of results on the IREV portal and that is why we are doing this mock accreditation.

So please disregard whatever was reported about what the REC was said to have said in Bayelsa. That’s going to be the procedure and it’s for that reason that I will advise you also for those who are registered on the IREV portal, that in the next two hours or so, they should go to the IREV portal you will see the result of the mock from all the three states, we are uploading, as we have done in previous elections.”

Professor Mahmood who was satisfied with the mock accreditation exercise said lessons learnt would help the commission conduct free, fair and peaceful elections.

“We chose this polling unit because it is the largest polling unit and most densely populated in Nigeria. It has 13,000 registered voters. After the election, the Commission will redistribute the voters to other approximate locations. But for now, we’ll have to conduct the elections with the number of registered voters in this polling unit.”

The INEC Chairman said strategies to overcome natural and logistics challenges were to be discussed after the mock accreditation in the three states.

“We will be deploying a minimum of eight BVAS machines on election day, Saturday 11, November 2023 for easy accreditation of voters.“

On why Gudumu polling unit was chosen for the mock accreditation exercise, he said one of the challenges of other location is flooding.

He emphasised the commission’s proactiveness to ensure that voters have pleasant voting experiences on Election Day.

The mock accreditation exercise took place simultaneously in Kogi, Imo, and Bayelsa states which reflected in pictures from Bayelsa showing large turnout for the mock accreditation.

“In fact, in Artisa in Yenagoa, there is even a queue of voters waiting to be accredited. And we believe it is the same story that we’ve been hearing very soon from Imo,” Professor Mahmood explained.

On security threats, he said there would be a high-level meeting with the national security adviser in which all the security chiefs would be present to discuss the issues for the three states.

He said the electoral body was doing all it could to make ad-hoc staff more comfortable by continuously and consistently providing security and provide minimum comfort.

Lateefah Ibrahim