The Independent National Electoral Commission has disclosed its intentions regarding the 2023 election results.
Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu revealed that raw election figures would not be transmitted electronically during Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections.
The INEC boss added that the Presiding Officers (Pos), would be required to use the BVAS machine to snap the election results on the results sheet from each polling unit.
Pos would further upload them on INEC Result Viewing Portal for Nigerians to see.
Yakubu spoke at a meeting with leaders of International Election Observers at the Commission’s Head Office in Abuja.
According to him, the decision not to transmit raw figures electronically was taken to avoid hacking as raw figures were more susceptible to hacking.
He also told the international observers that the decision was the main difference between the Kenyan experience and what the commission was doing.
Yakubu also assured that the elections were going to hold as planned since the Commission had mobilised all critical government institutions to ensure the success of the exercise.
He maintained that the Bimodal Voter Identification System (BVAS) which had been deployed for the elections was expected to perform three main functions.
He said:
“It confirms that the cards issued by the commission and presented by the voter is genuine and the voter is authenticated using the fingerprint and where it failed, the facial. Where both fail, the voter can’t vote. That is a matter of law.
“After the process is completed at the polling unit, the image of the polling unit result will be taken by the BVAS and uploaded into what we call the INEC Result Viewing Portal where citizens can see polling unit level results as the processes are completed at polling unit level.
“The difference between what Kenya did in 2015 and what we are doing is that we are not transmitting raw figures for collation. In fact, the law does not allow for electronic collation of results.
“So, we don’t transmit raw figures because raw figures transmitted online are more susceptible to hacking while images of a document are not susceptible to hacking.”
