Sunday Aborisade in Abuja
Two Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) senators, Gershom Bassey (Cross River South) and Abba Moro (Benue South), yesterday, faulted the arguments by the Senate President, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, on the provisions of the Electoral Act regarding the electronic transmission of results.
The senators insisted that the two chambers of the National Assembly duly passed the provision in the Electoral Act, which mandated the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to transmit election results electronically from polling units to its central server.
Lawan had during plenary on Tuesday, said there was no provision for the electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Act 2022, that the senate he led passed.
According to him, the National Assembly only made provision for the transfer of results from the polling units to INEC’s server.
“In the Electoral Act that we passed, there is nothing like the election transmission. What we passed is to transfer after all the paper works that we normally do while the agents and everybody there have the papers. INEC will scan or snap the result sheets and transfer them. We urge INEC to follow the Electoral Act and other laws on their guidelines,” Lawan had stated.
But speaking with journalists, yesterday, Senator Moro lamented that the INEC went ahead to announce the results despite local and foreign outcry due to substantial non-conformity with the electoral act regarding the electronic transmission of results.
Moro said, “By the passage of the electoral act, it is expected that BVAS was supposed to be used. It is supposed to provide information about the numbers of people that were accredited, and the eventual voters. What it means is that BVAS should be able to transmit electronically from the polling unit to the server in the INEC office.
“That is our understanding of the whole process. If we understand them to be so, what it means is that it is expected that the same instrument should be able to transmit the results to the central system. When it gets to the wards, it is supposed to transmit to the local government and later to the state. It is expected that when these sequence are followed, that we can guarantee the transparency in the system.
“The announcement of the election results would definitely affect the credibility of future elections in Nigeria. Nigeria’s image, integrity and sovereignty is at stake. What’s the big deal in suspending the process of announcement until after every aspects of concern are rectified?
“If the announcement is suspended, it would have saved the country from possible trauma,” Moro added.
On his part, Senator Bassey, who corroborated the submission by Moro, said, “Results were not uploaded to the server and we began to realise that it was a widespread issue through out the country. The key element of the process is that when the results are collated at the unit level, they should be uploaded to the server which must be accessible to everyone.
“That’s the whole essence of the new amendment to the law. Voter verification and verification of results. The verification from the server is the key plank of the process. It is the leg upon which the transparency of the INEC stands. We are saying that the process has been compromised, because many polling units have not been uploaded and it’s a major flaw of the election.
“It is clearly stated in the Electoral Act that when you vote in your unit, the results would be uploaded to a website where people can see the results real time,” he posited.
