Elections: It’s unfair to judge us for result upload glitch – INEC decries

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC lashed out that Nigerians should not judge them based on the glitch experienced in the upload of the 25th of February 2023 presidential election held across the federation.

Barry Andrews, who’s the EU chief Observer, said public condience in electoral commission was severely damaged in the February 25, 2023 general election due to the commission’s operational failures and lack of transparency.

The EU Andrews disclosed some corrective measures also introduced in the March 18 governorship elections across the country seemed to have had a positivities but overall, trust was not restored and this led to civil societies to call for an independent audit of the entire process pertaining to the elections.

The EU observation team made 6 priority recommendations.

While reacting to the final report on the 2023 general elections submitted by the European Union Election Observation Mission on Monday, 26th of June, 2023, FreshReporters media had noted that INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye, urged Nigerians not to judge the electoral empire as a result of the challenge the electoral commission experienced in the upload of the presidential election that led the current president, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu into the office of the President.

Reacting to the claim, he said,

“It is not fair to judge the entire performance of the commission on the basis of a glitch in the result upload for the presidential election,” he said.

According to Okoye, the law has empowered political parties to know what goes on across all the polling units.

“Almost all the political parties nominated and got accredited at least over 170,000 polling agents. What that means is that they had primary evidence of the results from the polling units. It is those results from the polling units, together with the BVAS as a machine itself that goes to the collation centre. So, it is not true for a political party to rely only on result upload in order to get the evidence with which it wants to prosecute its case in court,” he added