The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says it did not transmit results of the 2019 General Election electronically through its server due to circumstances beyond its control.
INEC National Commissioner in charge of Southwest, Solomon Soyebi, stated this at the post-election review meeting held at the Commission’s office in Osogbo, the Osun State capital.
“For some reasons, the Commission did not adopt ‘that option’ for 2019 election. It can only tell you that we are not ready for that technology because we were sure it would not be successful,” he said.
According to him, the clarification became necessary because of rising controversies on the transmission of the election results from states to the INEC server.
He further explained that although the process was piloted in Sokoto and tested in the Osun Governorship Election, it was not used for the General Elections.
“We didn’t use it for 2019 elections and I did say again that the 2019 elections were conducted according to law.
“We used the Federal Constitution of the Federal Republic, we used the Electoral Act and we used our own guidelines for 2019.
“If you look at all of them, we did not conduct elections outside these three instruments and you will see that there was no way where the issue of transmission was highlighted there,” he added.
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Meanwhile, the Resident Electoral Commissioner in the state, Olusegun Agbaje, also addressed some of the issues which led to elections being declared inconclusive.
According to him, violence was largely responsible for most of the rerun elections held in the country.
“Permit me to say that the Commission does not deliberately declare an election inconclusive as usually wrongly perceived by some members of the public.
“It is those who engage in disenfranchising voters as part of their win at-all-cost-strategy that should be blamed.
“If political thugs did not disturb votes in the five (Polling Units (PUs) of Oriade State consistency mentioned above, the Commission would not have declared the election inconclusive,” he said.
