Presidential poll: We’ve learned our lessons, glitches have been fixed – INEC

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it has learned its lessons from the February 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections.

INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye, stated on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics that “valuable lessons” learned would be used in the governorship and state assembly polls next weekend.

He said serious efforts were being made to rectify challenges with the Result Viewing Portal (IReV) ahead of the March 18 polls.

Okoye added that the ICT department of the commission now knows what to do if there are issues with the uploading of polling unit results on the IReV portal in March 18 polls.

• Protest: Makinde yields to pressure, removes his name from mosque
• Saudi Arabia unveils second national carrier, Riyadh Air, as uncertainty dogs Nigeria Air 

The IReV and the BVAS are new technologies introduced by the INEC for the accreditation and electronic transmission of votes for the 2023 general elections.

At the presidential and National Assembly polls, opposition parties complained that INEC officials at the polling units were unable to upload election results electronically to the IReV.

The parties also kicked against the manual collation of results and the announcement of winners in the polls.

The electoral body promised to fix the glitches but opposition parties have gone to court to challenge the victory of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) who was declared president-elect by the electoral umpire.

Last week, a Court of Appeal granted approval to INEC to reconfigure BVAS for the governorship and state assembly elections.

The commission subsequently postponed the governorship and state assembly polls from March 11 to March 18 to allow for the reconfiguration of BVAS machines.

‘All results of presidential election to be uploaded by tomorrow’

Meanwhile, Okoye said over 170,000 polling unit results of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections have been uploaded on its IReV.

He also said the reconfiguration of the BVAS would be completed on Tuesday in preparation for the March 18 polls.

“I’m sure that by Tuesday when we hope to complete the resettling of the BVAS for the purposes of the governorship and state assembly elections, the results in all the places where elections were conducted would have been pushed to the accreditation backend,” he said.