The Independent National Electoral Commission has assured that there will be no glitches in the upload of results for the Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi elections on the INEC Result Viewing Portal, in the upcoming November 11 governorship elections in the three off-season states.
The Chief Press Secretary of INEC, Rotimi Oyekanmi, made this known while assuring that the glitches experienced during the last general election will not occur this time, during an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday.
It would be recalled that the upload of results was a major issue in the 2023 elections, which INEC attributed to technical difficulties.
Addressing the issue, Oyekan said, “We have been using the IReV for all governorship elections, but it [2023] was the first time we deployed it for the general election setting. Well, we had a glitch for some hours, and we fixed it. But I can assure you that this time around we are not going to have glitches.
“I can affirm that those technical issues have been resolved. Last week, we undertook the mock accreditation, and one of the reasons we did that was to test run these technology gadgets we were going to use, and it was successful.”
According to him, there could be technology downtime at any point, noting that the body has learnt lessons from the conduct of the 2023 general elections.
“Technology can throw up challenges, but by and large, we have learned our lessons from the 2023 general elections,” he said.
Oyekan however clarified that what INEC does with the IRev portal is uploading and not transmission of results.
“We are not transmitting; we are uploading,” he said, noting that there are differences between transmitting and uploading.
“All we are doing is that we are taking a picture of the polling unit results and uploading the same to the portal,” he added.
