Governorship Elections: INEC to Post Live Updates on IReV

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has promised Nigerians that results from polling units will be uploaded in real-time on the Result Viewing Portal (IReV) on November 11, 2023, for the off-season governorship elections in the states of Kogi, Bayelsa, and Imo.

Mary Nkem, INEC’s Acting Director of Voter Education and Publicity, made this comment during Sunday night’s People’s Townhall on Election Security hosted by Channels TV in Abuja.

According to the official, all the problems that arose during the presidential and congressional elections earlier this year have been resolved.

There are many safeguards in place, she said, including sensitive materials being sent to polling units the day before the exercise and ad hoc officers camping outside polling units.

People are relocated closer to the polling units (PUs) where they are going to work rather than having to travel between the local government headquarters and the numerous polling units. God willing, I can tell you that we will deploy early,” Nkem remarked.

From the CBN vaults, she claims, critical materials will be relocated to the states of Kogi, Bayelsa, and Imo by Monday.

Mary Nkem, INEC’s Acting Director of Voter Education and Publicity, will be a guest on the Sunday, November 5, 2023, episode of Channels Television’s People’s Townhall to discuss election security.

 

Officials also stated that the Commission had conducted mock accreditation in all three states about three weeks ago “to confirm the functionality of the BVAS, accredit voters, and submit polling unit results to the IreV,” adding that everything went smoothly.

When asked if lessons had been learned from the problems with the IReV during the 2023 presidential election held in February, an INEC official stated, “Sure, we have a post-election review, and all of these things that went wrong were highlighted.”

“Well, the technology failed (glitch), but if you check the IReV right now, you’ll see all those results there. We can tell Nigerians that they were uploaded at a later date despite the fact that they were not available in real-time.

For example, “with the simulated exercise that we conducted, within two hours, all the results were on the IReV,” she said.

Nkem encouraged all political parties with candidates in the approaching polls to have records of the results of all the polling locations to monitor collation.