The Chairperson, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mahmood Yakubu, has said that the polling unit results of Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states governorship elections will be uploaded on its Result Viewing Portal (IReV).

Mr Yakubu said this while speaking with journalists at Ward 009, LEA School, Ganaja Village, Ajaokuta LGA, Kogi.

He was in the state to monitor the mock accreditation exercise ahead of the 11 November governorship elections in the three states.

The INEC Chairperson said the uploading is a matter of legal provision, but did not promise how prompt the polling unit results would be uploaded onto IReV.

By not making such commitment, Mr Yakubu could have taken his cue from the last presidential election when the failure to promptly upload polling unit results to IReV as earlier promised by the commission triggered tremendous criticism from opposition candidates and caused a major blow to the credibility of the poll.

Mr Yakubu said on Saturday that the commission would follow the laws for accreditation and results collation during the forthcoming elections, and projected that the results of the mock election would appear on IReV within two hours.

“The method is as provided by law – electronic accreditation, electronic upload of results on the IREV portal – and that is why we are doing this mock.

“So, please disregard whatever was reported about what the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) was said to have said in Bayelsa.

“That’s going to be the procedure and it’s for that reason that I will advise you also, for those who are registered on the IREV portal, that in the next two hours or so, go to the IREV portal and you will see the result of the mock accreditation from all the three states.

“We are uploading, as we have done in previous elections,” Mr Yakubu said.

IReV is an online platform where photographic pictures of polling unit results are meant to be uploaded using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines as soon as voting and collation end at the various voting units.

INEC had promised ahead of the last general elections that the results would be uploaded to IReV promptly.

But it failed to fulfill the promise with results ending up taking days to weeks to be uploaded to IReV for the public to access. The commission blamed the delay on an unforeseen system gitch.

But the failure became a touchy rallying point for opposition presidential candidates who lost the February 2023 vote. Alleging widespread fraud during the election, they maintained that the poll was invalidated by INEC’s failure to promptly upload the polling unit results to IReV as prescribed in the guidelines for the election.

The Presidential Election Petition Court, in September, dismissed the opposition candidates’ arguments about the IReV, a major thrust of their petitions, and affirmed the victory of President Bola Tinubu. The court insisted that IReV had no place in the legal process of counting and collation of results.

Displeased, the opposition candidates have raised the issue in their appeals at the Supreme Court where they are challenging the verdict of the presidential election court.

Security

On the issue of security concerns ahead of the elections in the three states – Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi – Mr Yakubu said that the commission was already working with security agencies.

“Next week Friday there is going to be a high-level meeting in Abuja co-chaired by myself and the National Security Adviser, in which all the security chiefs will be present, no representation, to discuss the issue of security.

“For the three states elections, we are on top of the situation in terms of security arrangement and security deployment,” he said.

Crowd control

On how INEC intends to control the crowd at PU 009 in Ganaja, Mr Yakubu said that INEC was taking proactive measures to give voters a pleasant voting experience on Election Day.

He said that INEC chose the PU 009, LEA School, Ganaja Village because it is the largest and most densely populated in Nigeria PU with 13,000 registered voters.

He said that on Election Day Voter register would be broken down alphabetically by the voter surnames to speed up track voting process.

“After the election, the commission will redistribute the voters to other approximate locations.

“But for now, we’ll have to conduct the elections with the number of registered voters in this polling unit.

“For that reason, we are deploying a minimum of eight BVAS machines on election day, Saturday, November 11 for easy accreditation of voters,” he said.

Mr Yakubu identified flooding as one of the challenges of the PU.

He said that INEC was already making arrangements to use the Family Support Programme (FSP) Nursery, Primary and UBE JSS, Gadumo-Lokoja as alternative supper RAC in case there was a flood during the election.

“If there is flooding before the election, we’ll pull the ad hoc staff out of here and move them at first light on Saturday to this polling unit.

“But our preference will be to use this place as a super-RAC where we will camp the ad hoc staff overnight,” he said.

INEC chairperson meets commission’s staff

Mr Yakubu, thereafter, met with members of staff of the commission at INEC state headquarters in Lokoja.

He said the visit was to ask the staff questions about their preparations, what had been done and what was still outstanding.

Mr Yakubu said that the purpose was to assess the readiness of the state for the 11 November election, adding that a similar visit would be undertaken to Imo and Bayelsa states.

“So far, so good on the part of the commission, we have delivered over non-sensitive materials for the election.

“Now the challenge is for you at the state level to begin to organise the materials and patch them.

“Each polling unit has a pack that is going to be carried by the presiding officer supported by the system presiding officer.

“I saw in Koton-Karfi that some of the materials have already been batched into the bags. I hope that all the local government areas will be the same all over,” Yakubu said.

Sensitive and non-sensitive materials

Speaking earlier, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Kogi, Gabriel Longpet, said that all non-sensitive materials for the election had been received and sent to the LGAs.

“We have received 60 per cent of our budget and have also started disbursing to LGAs to start those activities that need to be undertaken.

“We would like to request the Central Bank to be directed to give us our cash directly to avoid delays and problems with transportation and RAC activation,” he said.

Mr Longpet said that details of areas of possible flash points in the state had been identified, and would be the basis of security deployment.

(NAN)