Sundiata Post – One of the frontline Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on the aegis of YIAGA Africa which is focused on promoting democracy and good governance in Nigeria, has described the explanation provided by the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) over the technical glitch on the IReV viewing portal that delayed the upload of the 2023 presidential election results as elusive and unsatisfactory.
Mr Samson Itodo, Executive Director of YIAGA Africa, particularly questioned whether the error was accidental or as a result of incompetence or negligence on the part of those managing the system.
He stressed that there has to be a detailed explanation, saying that there is more in that space that INEC needs to explain to Nigerians, adding however that YIAGA Africa is not satisfied with the explanation provided by the electoral body in its report.
Itodo, who stated the position of YIAGA Africa when he appeared on Channels TV on Tuesday, said there was the need for a detailed explanation of how the error occurred, stressing that it was important for transparency and accountability on the part of INEC in relating with Nigerians that deserved a more comprehensive explanation.
Itodo said; “I have read the explanation by INEC as stated in the report and there are three questions. Yes, they attributed it to https error which provide more information about explaining the whole technical glitch in the statement issued by INEC.
“But, the question is, if this is a technological error, was it accidental or it was triggered either by the incompetence of those who were managing the system or negligence? I think these are fundamental questions that need to be answered.
“Yes, system do fail as we know technology is not a silver bullet, but there must be explanation for it. How did this happen? You have the BIVAS machine, you take an image of the result sheet, it uploads to a database, when it gets to there, ideally depending on the code written by the developer, it is expected that the code would have lifted the results that have come from the field into that database and then to the database for presidential elections so that the public can now view the results.“The big question is when you say there was an error, was it attributed to a group of individuals managing this erroneously wrote a code that didn’t perform that function or it was just a function of the system error?” he asked.