₦airaland Forum

It had been clearly established by the various election petition court judgements that:
“The Online IREV-Portal is not an official part of the results collation system -- and that it is just meant for the public consumption.

And again, since the definition and functions of the Online IREV-Portal are not established in the Electoral-Act-2022, then, its deployment and usage cannot be foisted upon INEC as a necessary or mandatory part of any election, and that whatever data which the INEC uploads to the IREV-Portal (or refuses to upload to the IREV-Portal) cannot be used against them for whatsoever reason.”

The simplest implication of this judgement is that the INEC should immediately stop the deployment of the Online IREV-Portal in ALL the upcoming and subsequent elections, pending the time the IREV-Portal is clearly established in the Electoral-Act as a necessary part of the Nigerian Electoral Process; so as to also stop the wastage of funds on an online portal/system which is not yet authorized by the electoral laws.

Another direct implication of the series of judgements is that:
THE ONLY OFFICIALLY RECOGNISED MANNER OF TRANSMISSION OF RESULTS AND ACCREDITATION DATA IS THE “MANUAL TRANSMISSION”.

Yes.
And there is nothing anybody else can do about it.

But then, there are laws inside the Electoral-Act-2022 that guided all forms of transmission of results -- whether electronic or manual -- which the INEC are not strictly adhering to, which I want to point out in this write-up.

Here below are the laws:
(All these laws here are excerpts from the Electoral-Act-2022)

1. All Accreditations whatsoever must be electronically done with the Card-reader or any technological device provided by the INEC.
(See Section-47(2))

2. There are no alternatives to the electronic accreditation prescribed in Section-47(2).
(See Section-47(3))

3. The Presiding Officer at the polling-units shall transfer the total number of accredited voters including the recorded results, in the manner prescribed by the INEC.
(See Section-60(5))
(In this case, the manner of transfer to be used by the INEC is “Manual Transmission”, as judged by the courts)

And finally to the most-important law which applies of all manner of transmissions which INEC might choose to go with,, (which even the courts chose not to see and pass any of their judgements upon),, and which NONE of the Collation Officers nor Returning Officers had not been observing in any of the elections so far...

4. A collation officer (at any level) or a returning officer (which is supposed to be the final collation officer) shall collate and announce the results of an election SUBJECT to the VERIFICATION and CONFIRMATION that the number of accredited voters stated on the collated results ARE CORRECT AND CONSISTENT with the number of accredited voters recorded (inside the Card-reader or any device provided by the INEC) and transmitted directly from polling-units under Section-47(2) of this Act.
(See Section-64(4(a)))



Therefore, with all these straightforward electoral-laws and the judgements of the courts, we are no more supposed to be dwelling on “whether the manner of transmission is electronic transmission or manual transmission”.

We are now only supposed to be fully concerned with, “whether there were VERIFICATIONS AND CONFIRMATIONS of the ‘Number of Accredited Voters’ which were written on the transmitted results for consistency with the ‘Number of Accredited Voters’ that were captured and recorded inside the transmitted BVAS-machines”.
This is because, the Electronic Accreditation of voters is Mandatory, and also, the Verification and Confirmation of the Accredited Voters before any Collation is also mandatory.
(As clearly stated in Section-47(2); and Section-64(4(a)))

The Section-64(4(a)) which clearly referred back to the Section-47(2) is a clear indication that the verification and confirmation of the accredited voters during the time of collation must be carried out using the values of the number of accredited voters that were captured inside the BVAS-machines during the time of the electronic accreditation process.

..
I think my explanations up to this point is very clear.

It is left for the accredited party-agents and the accredited observers to ensure that the Verification and Confirmation of the number of accredited voters are mandatorily carried out at all the First-Level Collation-Centers,, that is, at all the Ward Collation-Centers.

..
ANOTHER ADDITIONAL SUGGESTED WAY-FORWARD; IS THE INDEPENDENT COLLATION OF USED SENSITIVE MATERIALS.

The electoral laws made it very clear in Section-73(2) of the Electoral-Act-2022 that:
“Any election conducted at any polling unit without the PRIOR recording in the forms prescribed by the Commission of the quantity, serial numbers, and other particulars of the results sheets, ballot papers and other sensitive electoral materials made available by the Commission for the conduct of the election shall be invalid”.

This means that, the elections which took place in most of the polling units in Imo State and Kogi State in November 2023 went contrary to this particular electoral law,, where some the Presiding Officers in some Polling-units started the election without the arrival of the BVAS-Machines, in some other polling-units they started the election without the arrival of the authentic Results-sheets; whereas the laws made it clear that the materials must be complete before the start of the election, and that THEY MUST BE COMPLETELY RECORDED BY THE PRESIDING OFFICERS ACCORDING TO THEIR SERIAL-NUMBERS, BEFORE THE START OF THE ELECTION.
(And that also includes the BVAS-Machines and all the available materials too, both the sensitive and non-sensitive materials).

It is also the duty of the party-agents at every polling-unit to also write down these information in their own note-books too, and to also write down the exact serial-number of the particular Result-Sheet on which the Polling-unit Results were written upon,, (just in case that particular Result-Sheet got swapped along the way to the collation center, and replaced with another sheet similar to it).

At the end of the voting exercise at the polling-units, since the Presiding Officers counted the materials and wrote their numbers down before the start of voting,, they are also required to count the remaining materials and also write their numbers down in a separate document meant for that purpose.

The party-agents are also required to write down the numbers of these remaining materials, and their serial-numbers too.

The Collation of the number of materials that were supplied to each polling-unit, and the collation of the number of materials that were remaining after the election had been concluded -- is a very good method of checks-and-balances for any election, which the Electoral-Act envisaged in Section-73(2) of the Act.

This is also supposed to be the major work which the So-called Election Observers are supposed to be doing, since they are the supposed to be looking out for the checks-and-balances.

..
..

I am of the personal opinion that all hope is not lost yet when it comes to the monitoring of the integrity and the transparency of the Nigerian Elections..

The “Manual Transmission” option is a very time-consuming option, but since the court-judgements has left us with it as the only viable option for the transmission of results, then we actually have no other option than TO DO IT THE VERY BEST WAY IT SHOULD BE DONE, and that is:

NO COLLATION FOR ANY POLLING-UNIT CAN COMMENCE AT ANY FIRST-LEVEL COLLATION CENTER (THAT-IS, THE WARD COLLATION CENTER) UNTIL THE NUMBER OF ACCREDITED VOTERS THAT WAS WRITTEN ON THE RESULTS-SHEETS GETS VERIFIED AND CONFIRMED WITH THE NUMBER OF ACCREDITED VOTERS THAT WAS CAPTURED IN THE BVAS-MACHINES THAT WERE USE AT THE POLLING-UNIT IN QUESTION..

AND ALSO, ANY COLLATION EXERCISE FOR ANY POLLING-UNIT THAT STARTS OFF AT ANY COLLATION CENTER WITHOUT THE PRIOR VERIFICATION AND CONFIRMATION OF THE ACCREDITATION-DATA FOR THAT POLLING-UNIT IS NULL-AND-VOID.

BluntCrazeMan:
Let me just try and suggest to the political parties what they should be doing in all these upcoming elections; pending the time we have functional implementable and enforceable Electoral-Laws in Nigeria.


1. Elections must Not start in any polling-unit where the sensitive materials are not complete, or tampered with, or not well documented by the polling-officers and party-agents.

The nonsense that happened in Kogi State, where elections started in some Polling-units without the presence of the Result-Sheets.
The results were later written on PLAIN SHEETS OF PAPERS, and then, an entirely different result (written on the Supposed Actual EC8A Results Sheets) were later uploaded to the IREV-Portal.
That was so baadd.



2. If the INEC Officials said that the essential sensitive-materials would be brought to the Polling-units later, then the election MUST NOT START, until the sensitive-materials arrive.

Everybody at the polling-unit must wait for the sensitive materials to arrive in full, and properly documented before the election can start off..




3. The materials and booklets that were sighted before the election must be properly documented by the party agents too.

(These materials and booklets that were recorded before the election must be collated independently by the political parties -- WHILE THE MAIN VOTING CONTINUED)



4. These untampered sensitive-materials and booklets (including their serial-numbers too) which were documented and collated before the elections started, would later serve as a serious tool for Checks-and-balances after the whole Collation must have been completed.
[Section-73(2)-EA-2022]



5. After the whole election had been completed and concluded at each of the polling-units, all the remaining materials and booklets must be counted and properly documented, and their serial-numbers noted too..
(These remaining materials and booklets must also be collated independently again by the political party - for all the polling-units).



6. By applying the methods of checks-and-balances;
Whenever a results-sheet with a wrong Serial-Number is presented by any official at any collation-center, it would be noticed immediately and rejected outrightly.

(It means that the original sheet which was generated at the polling-unit had been swapped with another sheet which has another serial-number)




7. Still on the methods of Checks-and-balances;
The difference between the collated untampered full-booklets of ballot papes and that of those remaining booklets of ballot papers, would equal the number of used ballot papers, which is supposed to be equal to the “total votes cast + the destroyed ballots”.




8. The INEC - if left on their own - would not perform all these checks because they are in a haste to do what they want to do and end the whole process as quickly as possible.

But since the party-agents are also there as the electoral watchdogs, they must fully and aggressively apply these checks-and-balances, and use them to seriously question the credibility and the transparency of the elections.



9. On a very normal election day when massive rigging occurred, the values of the total number of ballot-papers used which INEC would be announcing would be so high.
(And these would be far higher than the actual number used as calculated from the checks-and-balances)..



10. The political parties must have their own fully independently collated parallel results of the election itself -- which is supposed to be totally independent of the INEC’s official collation.

The political parties Should Not solely depend on the collated results of the INEC for any reason.
It's too dangerous...



11. If there were transparent elections, the INEC’s-collated results should be in agreement with those parallel results that were independently collated by the political parties.

Then, under prefect conditions, all the results are supposed to all be exactly the same -- even though they were all done independently.



12. For the official collation of results by the INEC, the party-agents must make sure that they are fully present while the collation exercise progresses, no matter what happens there.

The party-agents Must Not boycott any part of the official collation exercise, be it at the lower level or at higher level.



13. For any collation-center where the party-agents were forcefully prevented from entering inside,, such party-agents must endeavour to capture such moments on videos as concrete evidence against the INEC and against such persons who prevented them from entering, so that it would be documented that the collation which happened inside such a center was fraudulent.



14. For any Ward-Level collation center where the “Accreditation Data” & “The Polling-Units Results” were not first cross-checked and re-confirmed using the BVAS-Machines; then, the collation officer at that collation center must be recorded on video and kept as evidence for violating the election procedures as clearly stated inside the Electoral-Act-2022.



These are my suggestions for now..
The political parties -- through their party-agents should be doing the tedious and rigorous works of the checks-and-balances for now,, until the time the electoral-act fully allows the new technological innovations to be doing the required checks-and-balances.

it's really very tedious, but they do not have much options for now.

Notfogotten:
INEC will soon introduce VAR.

BluntCrazeMan:
Garfield1, Racoon, Penguin2, Dalitigator.

NO COLLATION FOR ANY POLLING-UNIT CAN COMMENCE AT ANY FIRST-LEVEL COLLATION CENTER (THAT-IS, THE WARD COLLATION CENTER) UNTIL THE NUMBER OF ACCREDITED VOTERS THAT WAS WRITTEN ON THE RESULTS-SHEETS GETS VERIFIED AND CONFIRMED WITH THE NUMBER OF ACCREDITED VOTERS THAT WAS CAPTURED IN THE BVAS-MACHINES THAT WERE USE AT THE POLLING-UNIT IN QUESTION..

AND ALSO, ANY COLLATION EXERCISE FOR ANY POLLING-UNIT THAT STARTS OFF AT ANY COLLATION CENTER WITHOUT THE PRIOR VERIFICATION AND CONFIRMATION OF THE ACCREDITATION-DATA FOR THAT POLLING-UNIT IS NULL-AND-VOID.

fergie001:
This is already embedded in the Electoral Law and already takes place.

This also depends on Party agents.

All in all, the way out here is to yank IReV out of the Manual Guidelines & Regulations and introduce same into the Electoral Act.

However, there must be another option because someone can just take out the IReV like it happened in the last Presidential Election and chorus technical glitch, it becomes a problem.

Political parties should start educating their Party Agents.

DMerciful:
Obi won the election but IREV was shutdown to force manual process overnight where results were changed to favour the mandate thief, certificate forger and narcotics trafficker

fergie001:
This is already embedded in the Electoral Law and already takes place.


This also depends on Party agents.

All in all, the way out here is to yank IReV out of the Manual Guidelines & Regulations and introduce same into the Electoral Act.

However, there must be another option because someone can just take out the IReV like it happened in the last Presidential Election and chorus technical glitch, it becomes a problem.

Political parties should start educating their Party Agents.

fearlessfang:
Nigeria defies every form of logic.

BVAS is not the issue. We have a criminally propelled INEC which is now an arm of APC.

Look at the 2023 election. A crime orchestrated by Mahmoud and his hench men.

You can NEVER have a credible election in Nigeria. Not now that APC has appointed its member as electoral commissioners

Enjoy the madness till you’re ready to get out of cowardice and mobilize 25% of Nigerians and replicate what happened in Sri Lanka.

BadMaster:
One year later, and you still haven't woken up to reality

DMerciful:
Obi won the election but IREV was shutdown to force manual process overnight where results were changed to favour the mandate thief, certificate forger and narcotics trafficker

BigBlackPreek:
All eyes on the judiciary!