The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye has assured that the commission has rectified all the bottlenecks that had hindered the upload of election results from the polling units level.
Okoye who is also the INEC Commissioner in-charge of Abia State also disclosed that arrangements have been concluded to ensure early arrival of materials to polling units against what happened during the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections.
According to him, they have also carried out another round of training exercise for their ad-hoc staff and collation officers for effective handling of the BVAS to ensure that the machine performed optimally.
“We want to be sure that some of the challenges that we have with the Presidential and National Assembly elections are rectified. So, National Commissioners have been mandated to go round the states that they supervise to make sure that things are in order and to make sure that we are ready for the governorship and State Assembly elections.
“One of the things that we want to ensure is that polling units must open on time. Based on that, we have concluded our arrangements with the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) to make sure that they supply the requisite number of vehicles that we have ordered and to make sure that those vehicles are brought to our Super RACS and RACS on time for the purposes of deployment.
“We have carried out what we call refreshers training for the adhoc and other categories of staff that will be involved in this particular election for them to understand concretely and comprehensively the electoral process; how to handle the BVAS and how to carry out collation when the elections are over. So, we have sorted out that particular one.
“We want rectify all the few issues that created challenges for us during the Presidential and National Assembly elections and that is why National Commissioners are moving round on readiness and assurance to be sure that we are fully ready for the governorship and State Assembly elections.
“I think that I need to make this clear that, the BVAS that we use in election serves three purposes; when the commission is engaged in voters registration, we call the INEC enrollment device and we use it for the purposes of enrolling voters or for voters registration. During accreditation, we use it for the purposes of accreditation because it has what we call the fingerprint technology and the facial recognition technology, so we use it for the purposes of voter registration and accreditation. When elections are over, we use the BVAS for the purposes of transmitting or uploading polling unit results into our INEC result viewing portal.
“It was only the issue of the uploading of the polling units results that had challenges during the election and all those challenges that were encountered during the Presidential and National Assembly elections have been rectified. So, we are confident that going forward to the governorship and State Assembly elections, that results from polling units will be uploaded into our INEC result viewing portal and the public will be in the position to view these results as they are being uploaded from the various polling units. So, the glitches that we had during the Presidential and National Assembly elections have been rectified and we are confident that our processes and procedures will work optimally during this week’s elections.
Disclaimer: infonte9ja.com shall not be liable to Opinions, Articles or Features that doesn't emanate from any of its staff and management. We also wish to reiterate that such personal or sponsored opinion, article or feature does not reflect the views of the publishers of infonet9ja.com, but the writer's
For publication of your news content, articles, videos or any other news worthy materials, please send to infonetnews9ja@gmail.com | For Advert and other info, you can call 09061217047 or send a WhatsApp Message to 09061217047
“I want to assure Nigerians that in terms of voter accreditation, this commission never had any problem and Nigerians never complained about the accreditation of voters during this particular election. What Nigerians complained about was the upload of polling unit results into our INEC result viewing portal in relation to the Presidential and National Assembly elections, but in terms of the BVAS being used for the purposes of accreditation, the BVAS performed optimally and the BVAS will also perform optimally during the governorship and State Assembly elections.”
