Amidst the allegations of compromise by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at the just concluded presidential election in the country, INEC has reassured Nigerians that the commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) will be functional during the Saturday March 18 elections.
According to the INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye, the inability of the commission to transmit polling unit results directly to its portal in real-time as it promised before the presidential and parliamentary elections was due to “technical glitches.” He said that the “technical glitches” have been rectified ahead of the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.
Okoye, who spoke on Channels TV programme on Sunday, debunked the claim that the glitches suffered by the commission server were due to the ‘inappropriate’ transfer of its director in charge of information and communication technology (ICT), Chidi Nwafor, out of the headquarters’ office ahead of the election.
Following the failure of INEC to upload results of the February 25 presidential election from the polling units to its portal in real-time, there have been speculations that the transfer of Nwafor shortly before the election was part of a plot to rig the election. However, Okoye insisted that the commission is built in such a way that no department is wrapped around an individual.
“The present leadership of the commission wants to build a professional organization that is not wrapped around one individual. The individual (Nwafor) mentioned is a very good friend of mine; he is a director in the commission, and any director can be posted out or go and become an administrative secretary,” Okoye said.
“Now the time we readjusted the list of administrative secretaries was the time the commission was slightly panicky on whether we were going to have new resident electoral commissioners and we were preparing for elections.
“So, the commission decided in its wisdom that we are going to send our best hands to the various states as administrative secretaries to go and prepare the states for the purposes of election, and that was exactly what the commission did.
“We have a department in charge of ICT, and the Chidi I know tried to build a department that can stand on its own whether he is there or not, and that is the same thing with every department,” he added.
