Insight CSOs unveil collaborative tool to enhance transparency of election results

Enough is Enough (EiE) Nigeria in collaboration with the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), Dataphyte, CCHub and BudgIT has launched its citizens’ IReV portal, www.ootcresults.com.

The portal will display crowd-sourced Form EC8A from citizens and accredited observers to compare with results uploaded on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s IReV portal.

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 The portal is a data-driven citizen-led intervention to get citizens engaged in ensuring transparency of the votes cast. Four things can be done on the portal:

1) Uploading signed polling unit results sheet

2) Comparing to an uploaded IReV result sheet

3) Flagging discrepancies

4) Documenting happenings at the polling Unit – no voting, violence etc.

Recall that in the just concluded presidential and National Assembly elections, the transmission of the results to the IReV Portal proved to be INEC’s biggest challenge. It failed and led to the discontent of a huge cross-section of Nigerians with the electoral process, especially when evidence showed that the manual collation process allowed for the manipulation of results since the IReV polling unit results were unavailable.

The Executive Director of CJID, Dr Tobi Oluwatola, said this tool would help build trust in the electoral process. He said, “On February 25th, citizens were deprived of the agency of monitoring their vote from polling unit to data collation because a critical element of accountability, the IREV failed. www.ootcresults.com gives them another option to upload their polling unit-level results in real-time and compare them with INEC’s uploads to the IREV. We, in civil society, hope this modest intervention helps restore credibility to the electoral process.”

“It is hoped that this collaborative tool will re-ignite people’s will to get involved in the process.

Executive Director of EiE Nigeria, Yemi Adamolekun, said, “Citizens have shown that they are invested in these 2023 elections and we hope they do the work to ensure their votes count!” she said.

“Our objective for ootcresults.com is that it actually becomes the citizens’ portal, where we can collaboratively fulfill our watchdog function,” said the Founder of Dataphyte, Joshua Olufemi,

The simple technology, it is hoped, will ensure that public complaints are recorded and compiled for use in any future interventions.

Nigerian Citizens are therefore implored to go out and vote and take pictures of their polling unit’s EC8A form and upload them to www.ootcresults.com.