A former Director of Voter Education and Publicity of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, on Tuesday, said electronic collation of results for the 2023 general elections was not compulsory.
Osaze-Uzzi, who spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today, said the prescribed mode of collating results is manual.
Making reference to Section 64 (4) of the Electoral Act, the former INEC spokesman said section empowers the electoral commission to start collating the result upon verification and confirmation of the result.
“The prescribed mode is the manual collation; it didn’t say you should collate electronically. There is nowhere in the law, guidelines you will see electronic (collation of result),” he stated.
“Go back to (Section) 64 (4). Verification and confirmation, that is what is required with the electronically transmitted. But collation is still manual.
“Before you start that process, you must go to the electronic ones and say ‘Are these figures consistent?’ It doesn’t say to start collating from the BVAS, transmitted results. It says to start collation. Before you start collation, look at it and if the figures are the same, you gather all the EC8As together. In that sense, it is a manual process.”
Although the presidential and governorship polls have been held nationwide, there are still litigations filed by aggrieved parties who are challenging the outcome of the exercise.
In view of this, there are reports that INEC has budgeted over N3 billion to defend the results of the February 25 presidential and National Assembly elections and the March 18 governorship and state assembly polls.
Commenting on the issue, Osaze-Uzzi said though he read the reports in the media, he cannot officially verify how true it is from INEC.
He said, “I read that on social media, but I don’t know if it is an official statement from the commission. But yes, N3 billion for defending. But not just defending, but to the logistics of moving things around.”