By Sola Adeyegbe
That glitch which made it impossible to upload results to irev immediately must be fully explained by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. Nigerians as the primary election stakeholders need to know.
The upload of results from the polling unit straight to the INEC irev is an integral part of the electoral process. Therefore, INEC should let Nigerians know the exact nature of the glitch and make a full disclosure on it.
However, for clarity, let it be stated categorically that the failure to upload the results to irev does not invalidate the election results!
That is the purpose of Clause 48(c) and Clause 93 of the INEC Regulations. These Clauses, combined together, form the remedy to the situations where an upload to irev is not done. These same Clauses come in as remedy even if the INEC polling officer had gone to a bar after elections, gets drunk and thrown away the original form ec8a.
So if it happens that a stupid and wicked INEC polling officer fails to upload and later chews up and swallows the original result, the 2 clauses say that in such cases, the collation officer can use for collation purposes the copy of the results with the:
1. Police,
2. Party agents
in that order.
Let me reiterate that INEC remains responsible for delivering a credible election. The Clauses mentioned here do not remove from the duties of INEC to follow the rules. INEC remains responsible still and they ought to upload to irev as an integral part of the election process.
What the cited Clauses do is that just in case there is a failure in the upload, there is a fall back position. However this does not free INEC from a clear duty to upload. And if the upload was not done same day or done at snail speed over weeks and remains to be concluded as of now, then they owe Nigerians full explanations.
It is not enough to say there was a glitch. The glitch must be fully explained.
In my view, the upload to irev have been romanticized unnecessarily. The INEC officials right from their Chairman to other key officials have not helped matters. They gave Nigerians the wrong information. They gave information that suggest that irev uploads are the actual determinants of the veracity of results. The correct position by law and regulations is that collation is to be done with hard copy documents which is the hard copy of form ec8a. Where there are uploads, all the better and the collation officer will have the benefit of comparing the hard cooy with the one uploaded. But if the uploads are unavailable, the collation goes on even if the copies with the Police or the party agents will have to be used for collation.
Again, all these boils down to individual Nigerians. If all of us are determined to make things work, all the better. But if we are insincere, then no matter the law or regulations, they will be circumvented and bypassed.
We await the outcome of the post election review and analysis by INEC. We hope they will explain the famous glitch in their report. They must also pledge not to play to the gallery again, never again to mislead Nigerians by making false promises. All promises of “real time” upload to irev and making it appear as though the uploaded results are absolute in themselves are false and have caused so much pain, distress and distrust in the entire process. It was totally careless and unnecessary!
But INEC must fully explain that glitch!
I wish Nigeria well.
Barrister Adeyegbe, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.
