Confusion, as Nigerians counter INEC over U-turn on electronic transmission of results

Nigerians have expressed shock at the sudden new position taken by the National Independent National Electoral Commission ((INEC) on electronic transmission election results, when the latter filed an objection suit to the petition submitted by the Action Peoples Party (APP) before the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) sitting in Abuja.

APP which contested the 2023 General Elections had petitioned the PEPC claiming that INEC failed to follow the Electoral Act 2022 and also to abide by its own guidelines on mode of collation of results in the last presidential election.

The APP while alleging that INEC breached its own laws and guidelines in the conduct of the elections, is also challenging the result of the presidential poll and the declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Tinubu, on the grounds of alleged substantial non-compliance with the electoral laws of Nigeria, as well as flouting INEC guidelines.

However, responding in an objection suit before the PEPC, Monday night, INEC defended its position of manual transmission of collated results from polling units (PUs) when its included in its objection as it dismissed APP’s argument that results collation were to be done electronically, citing paragraphs 50 to 55 of the regulations and guidelines for the conduct of the 2023 presidential election.

INEC’s response was in reply to a petition by APP already before the PEPC in Abuja is also expected to serve as its position as it defends its case before petitions already filed by other political parties challenging the outcome of the 2023 polls.

The dates for hearing of the five petitions so far received from the PDP, LP, APP, Action Alliance (AA) and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) is yet to be fixed by the PEPC.

In its objection suit to the petition instituted by the APP, INEC through one of its lawyers, Abubakar Mahmoud SAN, insisted that it conducted free and fair polls on February 25.

“The election was free, fair, credible and in compliance with the constitution and the Electoral Act, 2022 and other relevant laws and guidelines,” it stated in one of the documents before the tribunal.

“There was no collation system of the 3rd respondent (INEC) to which polling unit results were required to be transmitted by the presiding officers…the prescribed mode of collation was manual collation of the various forms EC8A, EC8B, EC8C,EC8D and EC8E in the presidential election,” the electoral umpire stated in its defence.

“It was observed that while the result sheets were being successfully uploaded through the e-transmission system to the IReV portal in respect of the Senatorial and House of Representatives elections to their respective modules, the e-transmission was not processing and uploading the result sheets to the IReV portal in respect of the presidential election. The system was encountering glitches and was extremely slow.

“The 3rd respondent’s (INEC) technical team took every step to restore the application to functionality…five application/patches updates were created and deployed immediately with the aim of fixing the error,” INEC said in its court filing.

It also dismissed the allegation that its officials doctored results to favour a particular political party’s candidate or that there was over-voting, stating that its online result viewing portal (IReV) ‘became erratic at the point of collation and members of its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) team were called in to rectify the problem, reason the presidential results were not immediately uploaded.’

It would also be recalled that before the general elections also, INEC Commissioner, and Chairman, Information and Voter Education, Barrister Festus Okoye, confirmed while featuring as guest on Channel Television, earlier, that the election results will be transmitted electronically from the various PUs.

However, Nigerians have expressed shock over INEC’s claim on manual transmission of results, as they cited the electoral umpire’s earlier statement just before the February 25 Presidential Election where it affirmed that electronic transmission of election results from PUs was ‘mandatory,’ as enshrined in the Electoral Act 2022 Amendment.

Reacting to the recent claims by INEC that the prescribed mode of collation was manual, Nigerians dug up a February 7 post uploaded by the commission via its Twitter handle (@inecnigeria) where it enumerated the mode it intended to adopt in the conduct of the 2023 general elections.

The commission in the post affirmed that uploading PU results and accreditation data to the IReV portal.. is a mandatory provision of section 50, 60 and 64 of the Electoral Act 2022.’

The dates for hearing of the five petitions so far received from the PDP, LP, APP, Action Alliance (AA) and the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) is yet to be fixed by the PEPC.’

Also reacting, a political analyst, Sumner Sambo, insisted that INEC would have to tell Nigerians why there was delay in the uploading of the 2023 Presidential election results after Amazon Web Service (AWS) has been put on public glare.

“It’s left for INEC to prove to Nigerians, including through the server; and of course, you have the portal, which they have put in place for the viewing of results, to prove to us that they followed their own guidelines. And if they do that, you will see that the Amazon Web Service that actually hosted the cloud services of INEC is being put into public glare.

“INEC would have to tell us through the Amazon Web Service, if they are subpoenaed, as to how exactly these results were uploaded, and why we had delays.”

Sambo, who was speaking on the outcome of the February 25, 2023 Presidential election while featuring as guest on Arise Television, said INEC has been put on trial by the Labour Party petition.

According to him, there has been pressure on INEC to explain why the results of the February 25, 2023 exercise were not uploaded on portal from polling units as promised.

Similarly, legal practitioner, Tuesday, Mr Inibehe Effiong, reacting to the attempt by INEC to make U-turn on its earlier position, described the move as ‘irritating and nauseating.’

“The attempt by INEC to equate electronic transfer of results on IReV with collation of results is nauseating. The Electoral Act and the Guidelines are explicit. These are two distinct processes. Is INEC saying that it did not understand its own Guidelines? This is irritating.

“INEC Manual defines collation as the summation and tabulation of results. This is a duty reserved for collation officers. It is different from electronic transmission of results.

“Transfer of results to the collation system and transmission to IReV are distinct from collation.

“Why is INEC trying to confuse the public?”

Also reacting, Engr. Andy, said: “Festus Okoye clearly said that by INEC’s guideline and regulations, electronically transmitted result will take precedence if there is a dispute with the physical result. Today INEC is saying electronic transmission of result is not mandatory.

“It’s annoying. Electronic transmission of result and collation of result are two different actions. Festus Okoye even said data transmitted electronically will take precedence if there is dispute with physical copy of result during collation.”

Mr AbdulRaheem Razaq opined: “Please check there’s a section that categorically says that “Result must be Transmitted Electronically.”

A man simply identified as Paul wrote: “(Prof Mahmood) Yakubu forgot he told us how the process will go through. Did the same at Chatham House now he wants to deny it. They are setting a defense because they were petitioned.”

While a legal practitioner, Dr Agwu Turumbe wrote: “As an attorney I am sure this is a rhetorical question. They keep arguing what is not in contention. Just like the interim government argument was introduced by APC, INEC is introducing ELECTRONIC COLLATION. Them no rate us for this country.”

Meanwhile, in other related parts of the objection suit filed at the PEBC, late Monday, in Abuja, INEC through its lawyer, Mahmoud, described the reliefs sought in the petition by the Labour Party (LP) and its candidate, Peter Obi, against the declaration of Bola Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 presidential election as ‘grossly incompetent and abusive.’

The electoral body urged the tribunal to “dismiss or strike out the petition for being grossly incompetent, abusive, vague, nebulous, generic, general, non-specific, ambiguous, equivocal, hypothetical and academic”.

INEC also asked the tribunal to dismiss the petition, saying the reliefs sought by Obi and his party are not grantable.

According to the electoral body in its preliminary objection notice, the grounds of the petition are defective.

The electoral body argued that the petitioners’ grounds of non-compliance with the provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 and corrupt practices did not disclose a reasonable cause of action due to the petition’s failure to plead specific particulars and figures as to how the alleged non-compliance complained of substantially affected the election results.

It argued that the petition’s ground that Tinubu was not elected by a majority of lawful votes cast was invalid for failing to plead the alleged unlawful votes to be deducted and/or lawful votes to be credited to the petitioners.

It faulted the petitioners’ prayer that Obi should be declared the winner based on their argument that the LP candidate garnered the majority of lawful votes cast in the election.

According to INEC, the argument is defective due to a failure to join necessary parties and a lack of requisite particulars and pleading to support the same.

The commission said Obi did not poll the “majority of the lawful votes cast at the election” and/or secure “one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all states in the federation and the FCT (Federal Capital Territory)”.

The commission said all political parties with candidates contesting in the election were required to submit lists of their agents and who were expected to observe the election process at their units, sign and collect result sheets on behalf of their political parties at the close of polls.

INEC further argued that some of the political party agents whose names were on the list submitted to it were not at their polling units while some others who were present refused to participate in the process.

According to INEC’s objection suit, the Labour Party and its candidate, Obi did not have polling agents in all the polling units across the country, as they only submitted a list of 134,874 polling agents out of the 176,846 polling units required across Nigeria, meaning they were short of about 42,000 agents.

It would be recalled that INEC had declared Tinubu as the winner of the presidential election and ‘President-elect’ after polling 8,794,726 votes to defeat 17 others, including; Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, who polled 6,984,520 votes and Obi of the Labour Party who finished third with 6,101,533 votes.