The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the certified copies of election results obtained by party agents at polling units should be enough for any party to make its case in the event of contestation of the outcome of elections.
The electoral umpire said people should not make a fuss about the fact that it uploaded other election results on its portal but failed to upload the presidential election results.
Festus Okoye, the spokesperson for INEC, said this in an interview on Channels TV on Thursday.
He noted that political parties had agents at the polling units and were not supposed to rely on results uploaded on INEC Results Viewing Portal.
“What that means is that each political parties have primary evidence at the polling unit of those results. So, I find it slightly difficult to understand why they are relying on the results from the IReV,” He said when asked to explain the “discrepancy” in the commission uploading other election results on its portal but failing to upload the February 25 presidential election result on the server.
He added, “It’s not a discrepancy. We explained to Nigerians that there were challenges with uploaded presidential election results. The commissioner said there was a glitch in terms of uploading result of the election,” Mr Okoye said.
The INEC official stressed that the “upload of results of election into INEC Result portal was to build public trust and for the public to follow what goes on during election process.”
Okoye added, “But as you know, the electoral act 2023 gives every party the opportunity to nominate polling agents, what we call party agents, to be its eyes within various polling units. And most of the parties did nominate their polling agents.”
PDP and Labour Party are challenging the election that produced Bola Tinubu as president.
On March 1, INEC declared Mr Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress winner of the election, despite calls for cancellation of the process by opposition parties due to the umpire’s failure to upload results on its server.
Opposition parties led by Atiku Abubakar of PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party believe APC and INEC committed fraud in the election