Insight Nigerians fret on INEC’s failure to upload results on IReV portal

2023 Presidential Election INEC

Feb 26, 2023

Nigerians are worried that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) ad hoc staff have failed to upload results on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) portal from the polling stations as promised by the electoral body.

More than 24 hours after the commencement of result collation, fewer than 40,000 polling units (out of over 176,000) were uploaded on the INEC results portal. The electoral body attributed it to “technical hitches”, but many voters are sceptical.

Dataphyte’s review of INEC’s Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of the Election, 2022, and Electoral Act, 2022, reveals that the INEC’s action does not align with the spirit of the Act. According to Section 60(5) of the Electoral Act, the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including the total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot, in a manner as prescribed by the Commission.

In an attempt to ensure more credibility and transparency in its electoral process, INEC has adopted a number of measures. One of these includes snapping election results on the results sheet from each polling unit with the BVAS, and uploading them on the IReV in real-time on election day for citizens.

However, reports from some parts of the country indicated that INEC officials in some polling units in Lagos, Imo, and Delta states refused to snap the result sheets and consequently failed to upload them as required.

Some of the reports by many social media users also confirmed this with video evidence. Dele Farotimi raised this alarm on this page on Twitter.

The same as RolandIkeobi, who noted that INEC officials in refusing to upload the snapped results on the IReV portal.

Another user, @Flairtitude, an Abuja resident, also shared the same experience.

According to a caption she put on a video she posted, a corps member refused to upload the election results online.

“First, they said they don’t have internet; we gave them a router. Now they’re saying they don’t know the password after acting all slow. We are not letting this happen!” she said.

A similar incident occured during the Osun State 2022 governorship election. According to a report by The ICIR, the electoral body officials failed to upload results in one of the candidate’s polling units despite protests by the citizens and even offers by some party agents to buy data to enable them to do so.