INEC releases 2023 general elections report

…Explains why presidential election results failed to upload on IReV

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has released the 2023 General Elections Report.

The commission disclosed this in a statement by its National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee, Sam Olumekun, in Abuja on Friday.

Olumekun said the election report was reviewed and approved for publication at the commission’s weekly meeting held on Thursday.

He said the publication was done in keeping with the commission’s tradition over the last four electoral cycles, and its commitment to transparency.

Olumekun said the comprehensive 526-page document, structured into 13 chapters and enhanced with 60 tables, 14 boxes, and 10 graphs, offered an in-depth analysis of the election’s key processes, achievements, and challenges, alongside valuable lessons learned.

“The report showcases the election’s unparalleled diversity in party representation, demonstrating significant democratic progress.

“This election saw four political parties winning gubernatorial races, seven parties winning senatorial seats, eight in federal constituencies, and nine in state legislatures, illustrating a broad shift in political representation across Nigeria.

“The report underscores the pivotal role of technological advancements, particularly the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), in enhancing electoral integrity and reducing fraud.

“Furthermore, it addresses public concerns about the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal, explaining the technical issues encountered during the upload of polling unit results for the presidential election.

“Other aspects covered in the report include logistics, security arrangements, staff recruitment and training, inclusivity measures, and the electoral framework,” he said.

Olumekun said the document had been made accessible on INEC website (www.inecnigeria.org) and social media platforms.

He said the commission would welcome feedback to inform future electoral reforms and improvements.

 On the failure to upload results on the viewing portal which remains one of the most controversial aspects of the 2023 presidential election, INEC said  despite the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) working well on election day, uploading the presidential election results to the INEC result viewing portal (IREV) failed.

The IReV failure among other issues made opposition parties and some domestic as well as international election observers question the credibility of the polls.

But months after the exercise, the electoral body has now explained why uploading of results of the presidential election failed. The explanation is contained in parts of the official report of the 2023 elections, released by INEC on Friday ahead of the first anniversary of the election.

According to INEC, while the results for the House of Representatives and Senate were successfully uploaded, the presidential results failed to upload and instead “returned a HTTP server error response”.

INEC, however, stated that it later fixed the server error and that the first presidential election result sheet was successfully uploaded at 8.55 pm on the 25th of February 2023.

The electoral umpire noted that the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of PU presidential election result sheets on 25th February 2023 was due to the inherent complexity within the System, which it stated was difficult to anticipate and mitigate.

However, INEC insisted that the glitch in the upload of the presidential results sheets to iREV did not affect the credibility of the election.

The INEC report reads in part, “The 2023 General Election was generally peaceful and orderly nationwide. Most of the challenges encountered in the preelection, election and post-election periods were discussed in the preceding sections of this Report.

“However, a key challenge that impacted on the public perception of the election and elicited widespread commentary is the failure to upload Polling Unit results of the presidential election to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time at the close of polls on Saturday 25th February 2023.

“To begin with, it is important to note that the IReV portal is one of the most significant innovations introduced by the Commission prior to the 2023 General Election to promote the integrity and transparency of the electoral process.

“As a public-facing website, the IReV portal shows the images of the original Polling Unit result sheets as recorded in Form EC8A. The operational methodology and the concept behind the upload of results to the IReV for public viewing is quite simple.

“At the end of polls, Polling Unit results (Form EC8As) are scanned and uploaded to the IReV by the Presiding Officer(s). These results are then available for viewing to the public and all stakeholders.

“The system, which was first deployed during Nasarawa Central State Constituency bye-election in August 2020 and tested in 105 subsequent elections, including three (3) of-cycle governorship elections, has tremendously improved public confidence in the integrity and transparency of the Commission’s result management process.

“The challenge of uploading the PU presidential election results on the IReV

after the presidential and NASS elections on 25th February 2023 was unique. As voting ended across the country and POs began the process of uploading the images of the PU result sheets of the elections for the various constituencies around 4:00 pm, the Commission began to receive reports that attempts to upload presidential election result sheets were failing.

“Following these reports, the Commission immediately engaged with its field officials for details in order to understand and trace the origin, source, scale and magnitude of the problem across the result management ecosystem to devise appropriate solutions.

“In the troubleshooting process, it was established that there was no issue in uploading the PU result sheets of the Senate and House of Representatives

elections through the Election Result Modules.

“However, there was a problem with uploading the presidential election results to the system. Attempts to upload the results were generating internal server errors, which refer to a significant impairment that usually originate from within an application due to problems relating to configuration, permissions, or failure to create or access application resources correctly.