Nigeria’s National Electoral Commission (INEC) has assured that despite the increased attacks on its infrastructure, the 2023 elections would still go ahead as planned.
This was disclosed by INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu in a meeting with an Africa Union Special Pre-Electoral Political Mission delegation led by Phumzile Mlambo- Ngcuka on Monday in Abuja.
INEC revealed that in the last three weeks, three of its local government area offices were attacked in three different states of the federation.
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu said “ In the last three weeks, three of our local government area offices were attacked in three different states of the federation and the last one occurred yesterday in the South Eastern part of the country.
“Although there were no casualties quite a number of the materials already acquired and delivered for the elections have been lost.
He noted that INEC can recover from all the losses but it’s a source of concern, citing that This shouldn’t be allowed to continue.
“So, we will continue to engage with the security agencies to make sure that these offices as well as personnel and our facilities are protected ahead of the election,” he said.
He added that the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the Results Viewing Portal (IReV) for voter accreditation and uploading of PU results in real-time had come to stay, stating that Nigerians may express some concern about the attack on these facilities but it will never deter the commission from going ahead with the election as scheduled.
Yakubu said there was no going back on the deployment of those technologies because it was a requirement of the law making it mandatory for INEC to do so, revealing that between August 2020 and July 2022 the technologies were deployed for about 105 off cycles, and by-election including the Anambra, Ekiti, and Osun governorship election.
“We are happy with the pilot that we have conducted and these are results you can still view on the portal.
“We kept asking particularly political parties to compare the results given to them at the point, that is the hard copy signed by their agents and what we uploaded on the IREV portal and we have been asking them if there are discrepancies.
“So far, all the political parties have confirmed that it’s 99.9 percent accurate so we are happy with that pilot,” he said.
“We are required to proceed in the manner that the law requires us to do using the deployment of technology for the purpose of accreditation and uploading of Polling Unit level results from the PU on election day for transparency.
He also revealed that INEC now has more litigations arising from the conduct of primaries by Political parties rather than the main election conducted by the commission and INEC was better prepared for the 2023 general election.
