The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it will upload election results from the 5,634 polling units to its result-viewing portal in today’s governorship poll in Anambra State.
The commission, however, said that the collation of results would be done manually as obtained in previous elections and not with the uploaded results.
INEC expressed confidence that the technological approach, designed to enhance transparency in the election management process would boost people’s confidence in elections and enable Nigerians to view polling unit results in real-time as voting ends.
The innovation, introduced in August 2020, was first used by the electoral body on August 8, 2020, Nasarawa Central State Constituency’s bye-election and was later deployed in the Edo and Ondo states governorship elections held on September 19 and October 10, 2020, respectively.
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INEC National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said that after the commission converted 1,112 voting points to full-fledged polling units, the total polling units in the state rose to 5,720.
He said 86 polling units would not be used because the commission could not carry out batch transfers because of insecurity and the inability to carry out intensive civic and voter education.
Meanwhile, Okoye said the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), newly introduced by the commission, would more or less replace the card readers going forward and would be used for voter registration, accreditation and uploading polling unit results to the result-viewing portal.
Okoye said:
“BVAS allows us to use one machine for the purposes of voter registration, accreditation – fingerprint and facial authentication – and uploading of polling unit results to our result-viewing portal. So, it’s a three-in-one solution. We are confident that the BVAS will perform well and it will be the dominant means of accreditation going forward.
“The commission will upload polling unit level results to our INEC result-viewing portal. We are confident that our new technological approach to elections will continue to yield results. We have trained all the ad hoc staff that would use the BVAS and the implication is that we have more or less retired the smart card reader as equipment for voter accreditation.”
According to Okoye, BVAS was dispatched to the local government areas since Thursday, adding that if any challenges arose, whether in the voting or logistics, the commission had the capacity to deal with them.
