THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has dismissed insinuations that it has jettisoned electronic transmission of results and reverted to the manual process for the 2023 general elections.
The insinuations followed a report by Punch newspaper which quoted INEC spokesperson Festus Okoye as saying that results of the 2023 general elections would be collated manually.
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Okoye’s statement had elicited many angry reactions on social media, with many Nigerians saying that the Commission had perfected plans to circumvent next year’s general elections.
Reacting, Okoye Okoye, in a statement seen by The ICIR on Sunday, said his comments on the management of results were misconstrued and misunderstood.
While noting that the Commission has no intention to subvert provisions of the Electoral Act, Okoye said that his earlier statement was about collation and not transmission.
”The Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) attention has been drawn to a misunderstanding arising from a recent short interview granted to a national newspaper on the procedure for result management during elections,” Okoye said.
“Some have interpreted the explanation of the result management procedure to mean that the Commission has jettisoned the electronic transmission of results and reverted to the manual process. This is not correct.
“For clarity, the procedure for result transmission remains the same as in recent Governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States. There will be no change in all future elections, including the 2023 General Election.”
He assured Nigerians that the electronic transmission of results has come to stay, noting that the process adds to the credibility and transparency of the elections if citizens follow polling unit-level results on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time on Election Day.
He added that the Commission would follow in detail the letters of the Electoral Act for the conduct of the elections.
“The entire gamut of result management is provided for in Sections 60, 62 and 64 of the Electoral Act 2022. In line with the provision of the law, the Commission, in April this year, released a detailed clarification of the procedure for transmission, collation and declaration of results which was shared with all stakeholders and uploaded to our website,” the INEC spokesperson added.
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