***Apologises to Nigerians, says results safe
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said technical challenges with its system were responsible for the delay in uploading the presidential election results to its Results Viewing Portal (IReV).
The commission admitted that, unlike off-season elections where the portal was used, it had been relatively slow and unsteady during the presidential and national assembly elections.
National Commissioner and Chairman of, the Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, stated this in a statement on Sunday.
As of 6 pm on Sunday, The Guardian checks revealed that the commission has uploaded less than 30 percent of presidential election results to its IREV.
Okoye said the commission “regretted the setback, especially because of the importance of IReV in our results management process.”
The national commissioner maintained that problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, State elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections.
He stated: It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations.
“Consequently, the Commission wishes to assure Nigerians that the challenges are not due to any intrusion or sabotage of our systems and that the IReV remains well-secured.
“Our technical team is working assiduously to solve all the outstanding problems, and users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since last night.
“We also wish to assure Nigerians that results from the Polling Units, copies of which were issued to political parties, are safe on both the BVAS and the IReV portal.
Okoye, however, assured that results cannot be tampered with and any discrepancy between them and the physical results used in collation will be thoroughly investigated and remediated, in line with Section 65 of the Electoral Act 2022.
“While we fully appreciate the concerns of the public on this situation and welcome various suggestions that we have received from concerned Nigerians, it is important to avoid statements and actions that can heat up the polity at this time or promote disaffection towards the Commission.
“We take full responsibility for the problems and regret the distress that they have caused the candidates, political parties and the electorate”, he added.
