Anambra Poll: Yiaga Hails Upload Of Results On IReV, Condemns Vote-Buying

Civil society organisation, Yiaga Africa, has commended the upload of results for the Anambra governorship election on the INEC result viewing portal (IReV).
The Executive Director of Yiaga, Samson Itodo, said the portal “performed optimally”.
“On result management, the IReV portal performed optimally, and results were uploaded promptly.
“By 8 p.m. on Saturday, 98 per cent of polling unit results were already uploaded. The collation process was seamless,” Itodo said on Monday’s edition of Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.
“At Yaga Africa, we deployed observers and used the parallel vote tabulation (PVT) to verify the results, which fell within our estimates. To that extent, we have confidence in the results declared by INEC,” he added.
A check on the IReV portal as of Saturday night indicated that 99 per cent of the Anambra election results were uploaded on the IReV portal.
Itodo said the display of results on the portal was one of the key areas the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) performed well during the recently concluded election.
The usage of the IReV was a contentious issue in the 2023 presidential election after the portal failed to display the results in real-time.
“By and large, the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of polling unit presidential election result sheets on 25th February 2023 was due to the inherent complexity within the system, which was difficult to anticipate and mitigate,” INEC said in a 526-page report about the 2023 general elections.
During its judgment on the presidential election, the Supreme Court said that the IReV failure may have contributed to the reduction of public confidence in the electoral process.
“Truth must be told, the non-functioning of the IReV may have also reduced the confidence of the voting public in the electoral process,” the presiding justice, Inyang Okoro, who read the court’s lead decision, said.
During his screening in October, the new chairman of INEC, Joash Amupitan, promised to audit IReV over the glitches.
“I have to audit the system, if I’m given the opportunity, to see what is actually wrong and whether we have what it takes as it is now,” Amupitan told lawmakers at the Senate.