The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has insisted that electronic collation of results is illegal in Nigeria.
The commission said this against the backdrop of expectations that the results of Saturday’s off-cycle governorship elections in Imo, Kogi, and Bayelsa states would be transmitted electronically.
The Chief Press Secretary to the INEC chairman, Rotimi Oyekanmi, made the clarification to newsmen yesterday, as the police in Imo State warned the organised labour against intimidating voters during the election in the state.
There has been a clamour for electronic transmission of election results in the country with the issue forming a core plank of the presidential election petitions filed at the Presidential Election Petitions Court by the Peoples Democratic Party and the Labour Party.
But Oyekanmi clarified that the result viewing portal was not for collating election results or determining the winner; neither was the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System an electronic voting machine.
When asked how results from the polling units would be transmitted after voting had been concluded in the governorship polls in the three states, Oyekanmi explained that Polling unit election results, also known as Form EC8As, will be uploaded directly to the INEC Result Viewing Portal from the individual Polling units by the presiding officers after the close of poll and declaration of results at that level.
Credit: Punch