Our result viewing portal not sabotaged – INEC

From Winifred Bosa, Lagos

Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said that its Results Viewing Portal (IReV) has not been sabotaged or compromised .

INEC Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye explained this in a statement.

He said: “The problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season state elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections. It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations.

“Consequently, the commission wishes to assure Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems, and that the IReV remains well-secured.”

The INEC Commissioner, apologised and promised that the glitches will be resolved.

“The commission regrets this setback, especially because of the importance of IReV in our results management process.

“Our technical team is working assiduously to solve all the outstanding problems, and users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since last night.

“We also wish to assure Nigerians that results from the polling unit copies of which were issued to political parties, are safe on both the BVAS and the IReV portal.

” These results cannot be tampered with and any discrepancy between them and the physical results used in collation will be thoroughly investigated and remediated, in line with Section 65 of the Electoral Act 2022.”

“While we fully appreciate the concerns of the public on this situation and welcome various suggestions that we have received from concerned Nigerians, it is important to avoid statements and actions that can heat up the polity at this time or promote disaffection towards the commission.

“We take full responsibility for the problems and regret the distress that they have caused the candidates, political parties and the electorate.”

Many have bitterly complained that INEC officials at the polling units were unable to upload election results to the IReV.

The IReV and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) are new technologies introduced by the electoral body for the accreditation and electronic transmission of votes for this year’s polls.