Result-viewing portal now working, ready for gov polls – INEC Says

The Independent National Electoral Commission has given assurance that its result-viewing portal that suffered glitches during the presidential and National Assembly elections is now up and running.

It said the IReV portal would be deployed during the governorship and House of Assembly elections on Saturday.

The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, said this in an interview with our correspondent on Sunday.

INEC had received backlash from political parties, observers, individuals and various interest groups for failing to upload polling unit results to the portal prior to the collation.

Some political parties and individuals had relied on the glitch to demand the cancellation of the results.

Meanwhile, checks on Sunday, by newsmen, revealed that INEC has so far uploaded 161,624 results from 176, 846 polling units, eight days after the presidential poll.

The figure represents 92 per cent of results from all the polling units.

As of the time of filing this report, the electronic transmission of results was still ongoing.

Nigerians had expected that the election results would be uploaded on election day as promised by INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu.

However, INEC came under fire for its failure to upload results to its viewing portal, which led to the walkout of some parties agents on Monday at the National Collation Centre.

Checks by newsmen on Sunday revealed that the results of all the polling units had yet to be uploaded on INEC website.

According to the commission, BolaTinubu, candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, won 8.8 million votes, while main opposition candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi had 6.9 million and 6.1 million votes, respectively.

Speaking on the issue, Oyekanmi stated, “The technical glitches that affected it on February 25 have now been resolved. It will be deployed for the governorship and state Assembly elections scheduled for March 11.”

On the calls on INEC to cancel the election, Oyekanmi said, “The aggrieved parties have a right and an opportunity to ventilate their grievances at the Election Petition Tribunal if they are dissatisfied with the outcome of an election. So far, in the case of the just concluded presidential election, two political parties have openly rejected the outcome and have already indicated their intention to do just that – go to court.”

(NAN)