Electronic Transmission Not Mandatory, No Result Manipulation – INEC. Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has responded to allegations of non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022 and its own guidelines on the collation of results in the last presidential election. The Action Peoples Party (APP) filed a petition before the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) in Abuja, challenging the result of the presidential poll and the declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) standard bearer, Bola Tinubu. INEC defended its position in response to the APP’s allegations, stating that it conducted a free, fair, credible, and compliant election on February 25, 2023.
The APP had claimed that INEC violated its laws and guidelines. However, INEC responded by dismissing the party’s argument that results collation should have been done electronically, citing regulations and guidelines for the conduct of the 2023 presidential election. INEC stated that the prescribed mode of collation was manual collation of various forms EC8A, EC8B, EC8C, EC8D, and EC8E in the presidential election.
Electronic Transmission Not Mandatory, No Result Manipulation – INEC.
INEC also denied allegations of result tampering and over-voting. It stated that its online result viewing portal became erratic at the point of collation, and its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) team was called in to rectify the problem because the presidential results were not immediately uploaded. INEC argued that it took every step to restore the application to functionality and that five application/patches updates were created and deployed immediately to fix the error.
Read More: Gov. Soludo Inaugurates New ASHDC Members , Targets 180% Revenue Increase
To support its argument, INEC stated that it would tender in evidence the report of its ICT department during the tribunal hearing with two witnesses who are INEC officials for further clarity. The PEPC is yet to fix the dates for hearing the five petitions received from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP), the APP, Action Alliance (AA), and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM).
Electronic Transmission Not Mandatory, No Result Manipulation – INEC.
INEC has responded to the allegations of non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022 and its own guidelines. It has denied the allegations and defended its position, stating that it conducted a free, fair, credible, and compliant election. The evidence to support its argument will be presented during the tribunal hearing.
