<strong>INEC not uploading results raises transparency concerns </strong>– CSOs situation room

From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja

The Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room has said the inability of adhoc staff of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload results of the presidential and National Assembly elections raises concerns on transparency and accountability of the process.

Its convener, Ene Obi, who decried the trend on a national television programme regretted that INEC chairman, while announcing that the situation room for collation of results will be officially open at 6pm on Sunday, was silent on the concerns raised by Nigerians on uploading results to its service across the nation.

“One of the biggest concerns is that the INEC portal, the results viewing portal is nothing to write home about. The presidential results are not going up there, the Senate and House Representatives is there, but they are not uploading the results.

“When we had the bye-elections, by now all the results were in. We do a lot of analysis to ensure that wrong results are not imputed because we have observers in different polling units and at the end of any collation they do snapshot of the results, and the result ought to have been uploaded.

“We know there is the second authorization for that upload to go, but at least that upload should have gone from the polling units.

“The reports we are getting is that many of the adhoc staff are not uploading for one excuse or the other. But we thought we had gone across this. 

“We do understand that we are deploying these BVAS for the first time in a general election but it worked perfectly during the off circle election and there was no problem at all. By 10 am the next day after the election, we had almost 90 percent of the result already uploaded.

“So it’s a major concern for us and we thought INEC will address it, that was not addressed and there’s no upload going on, at least I am just coming from the collation center now.”

Obi said it was important that for the sake of accountability and transparency, INEC uploads the results to inspire confidence of young voters in the process.

“We are in a tech age, a lot of young people are believing in this because they feel they can see transparency, they can trust the system. But when you withhold any part of the process, it will raise suspicion. So we are encouraging INEC because there has been no explanation, and if there are challenges, they should communicate the challenges to the public.  On behalf of the CSOs, we are calling on INEC to upload the result.”