•PDP doubts commission’s credibility
Chukwudi Nweje and Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said collation and transmission of results of Ekiti and Osun states governorship polls will be done electronically.
Besides, INEC, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and telecommunications providers in Nigeria are set to meet on how to deploy electronic collation and transmission of results of the 2019 general elections.
No date has been fixed for the parley.
Indications that INEC is pressing ahead with electronic collation and transmission of the 2019 election results emerged on Tuesday January 30, when the National Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu led top staff and directors of the Commission on a courtesy visit to the NCC headquarters in Abuja where he met with the Executive Vice Chairman, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta and top management staff.
The time has come to electronically collate and transmit election results. We are convinced that, by doing so, results will be transmitted faster and more accurately from the polling units to the various collation and declaration centres.
“In several re-run and bye-elections conducted since the 2015 elections, the Commission has deployed electronic collation and transmission platforms on a pilot basis. More recently, we conducted simultaneous electronic and manual transmission of results in some major elections. We are planning full deployment this year, in the governorship elections in Ekiti State in July and Osun State in September. Thereafter, we intend to deploy the system in the 2019 general elections.
“While we will transmit the raw figures from the polling units, scanned images of the result sheets will also be transmitted electronically in addition to the physical copies given to political party agents at each polling unit and each level of collation. Therefore, there will be paper trail against which the integrity of electronically-transmitted figures can be compared and verified.”
Yakubu urged the NCC to facilitate a meeting between INEC and the telecommunications operators to provide the Commission with the combined network coverage map for all operators in the country, including network strength that could help INEC deploy its e-collation system successfully.
In his response, Danbatta assured Yakubu NCC is also committed to free, fair and credible elections. The two organisations immediately set up a technical committee, comprising members from both sides, to work out details of the collaboration.
Meanwhile, National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has expressed fears over whether INEC will conduct free and fair elections in 2019. Secondus, who expressed the fear when the United Nations (UN) Election Assessment team visited him at the PDP secretariat in Abuja, said since inception of the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led administration, INEC has been in the habit of ordering reruns, in elections that did not favour the ruling party.
In his response, leader of the UN team, Mr. Serge G Kubwimana, said they are meeting with political parties, to assess how they can support them in the run-up to the 2019 polls.