INEC asked to ‘satisfactorily explain’ failure of IReV during presidential poll

Tochukwu Ezeoke, chief executive officer of Njenje Media, says the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has not adequately explained the failure of the result viewing portal (IReV) during the presidential election.

Ezeoke spoke on Sunday while being interviewed on ’90 Minutes Africa’, an online programme hosted by Rudolf Okonkwo.

On February 25, INEC was unable to instantly upload the results of the presidential election — but the figures from the senate and house of representatives polls were instantly uploaded on the IReV portal.

All three elections were held on the same day.

INEC had blamed a system “glitch” for the challenges encountered during the upload of results.

Reacting to the development, Ezeoke questioned why INEC insisted on the deployment of IReV if political parties are expected to rely on copies of results from polling unit agents.

“Before the election, INEC assured that the usage of BVAS and IReV is sacrosanct and must be adhered to,” he said.

“It is sad that the same INEC is now questioning the importance of the IReV.

“The question I will then ask is: don’t we know that we had agents before we talked about electronic transmission?

“What INEC has not been able to satisfactorily explain to us until now is how come three elections were conducted in one day, and the results from two of them were successfully uploaded to the IReV, but the result of the third couldn’t be uploaded?”

The journalist commended the presidential election petition tribunal for conducting its proceedings “fairly”.

He said the Labour Party (LP) had been allowed to present its case before the tribunal without unnecessary objections from the All Progressives Congress (APC).

“In many instances, they will raise objections for no obvious reasons. It gladdens that once they raise these objections, the court would say they overruled that objection,” he said.

“With the exception of one or two times that an objection was sustained, it has always been that their objections were stepped down and rejected, allowing the Labour Party to present their evidence.”