By Abimbola Ogunnaike
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed that over 170,000 polling unit results of the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections have been uploaded on its Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
The Commission also said the reconfiguration of the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) would be completed by Tuesday, 14 March, 2023, in preparation for the Saturday, 18 March, 2023 Governorship and State Assembly Elections.
INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye, made this disclosure on Sunday, 12 March, 2023 during an interview on Channels Television’s programme, Sunday Politics.
“As at the last time, over170,000 of those results have been uploaded. As you are aware, we are reconfiguring the BVAS for purposes of the Governorship and State Assembly Elections, and any BVAS that was used for the Presidential and National Assembly Elections that do not push to the accreditation backend, the data relating to the conduct of the presidential and National Assembly elections will not be reconfigured,” he said.
The INEC Commissioner, who said the BVAS will not allow itself to be reconfigured or reset if the entire data is not pushed to the accreditation backend, added “I’m sure that by Tuesday when we hope to complete the resettling of the BVAS for the purposes of the Governorship and State Assembly Elections, the results in all the places where elections were conducted would have been pushed to the accreditation backend.”
According to Okoye ,every Nigerian has the constitutional and legal right to protest. However, he said no political party will be allowed to look into the brain of the BVAS or the biometrics of voters.
He explained that INEC is the regulator of political parties and the commission won’t abdicate its core responsibility to aggrieved political parties.
Okoye said the court judgment that voters could use their temporary voter cards to vote is not applicable for all Nigerians but for the individuals who went to court.
The INEC Commissioner also blamed political parties for making polling units “inaccessible” for voters, leading to low turnout at the last polls.
