The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Sunday clarified it has no plan to jettison provisions of the Electoral Act 2022 on the electronic transmission of results.
INEC National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee Festus Okoye said this in a statement in Abuja.
The clarification, Okoye said, followed a media report (not in Blueprint) quoting him as having said next year’s general elections would be collated manually, despite the legislation on electronic transmission of results.
“Electronic transmission of result has come to stay. It adds to the credibility and transparency of the process when citizens follow polling unit-level results on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time on Election Day. There will be no change or deviation in subsequent elections,” Okoye said.
The INEC chief also said his explanation to the medium which reported the story was about manual collation and not transmission, in line with certain provisions of the Electoral Act.
The statement said: “The Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) attention has been drawn to a misunderstanding arising from a recent short interview granted to a national newspaper on the procedure for result management during elections. Some have interpreted the explanation of the result management procedure to mean that the Commission has jettisoned the electronic transmission of results and reverted to the manual process. This is not correct.
“For clarity, the procedure for result transmission remains the same as in recent Governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States. There will be no change in all future elections, including the 2023 General Election.
“We wish to reassure Nigerians that the electronic transmission of results has come to stay. It adds to the credibility and transparency of the process when citizens follow polling unit-level results on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal on real-time on Election Day. There will be no change or deviation in subsequent elections.
“The entire gamut of result management is provided for in Sections 60, 62 and 64 of the Electoral Act 2022. In line with the provision of the law, the Commission, in April this year, released a detailed clarification of the procedure for transmission, collation and declaration of result which was shared with all stakeholders and uploaded to our website.
“We appeal to all Nigerians to avail themselves of the provisions of the Electoral Act and the Commission’s detailed explanation of the procedure and not reach a conclusion on the basis of media headlines.”