Yiaga Africa has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to protect the transparency of the result collation process by ensuring easy access to the collation centres for accredited observers and party agents.
Yiaga Africa said this at its Watching The Vote (WTV)’s Situational Press Statement on the Saturday’s Presidential Election jointly signed by Hussaini Abdu, Chairman, WTV Working Group and Samson Itodo, Executive Director.
Reading the document, Abdu called on INEC to provide clear communication on locations where the General Election did not hold and ensure the process was concluded in those locations before returns were made.
“Yiaga Africa expressed concerns about the unexplained delay in uploading polling unit results for the presidential election on the INEC Election Results Viewing Portal (IReV).
“As of 10 p.m, on election day, results for the presidential election were not uploaded on the INEC portal after voting and counting ended in several polling units.
“At 9:00 am on Feb. 26 ,INEC uploaded only 25,503 results for the presidential election on the INEC portal.
“The delay in uploading the results undermines public confidence in the results transmission process as it deviates from the guidelines for the elections and it failed to meet citizens expectations,” he said.
Abdu said that the failure of the IReV system, intended to enhance transparency, undermined public confidence in the process.
He said INEC should make publicly available all the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS ) accreditation data by polling unit, including the number of voters accredited by finger vs facial recognition.