The National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee of INEC, Barr. Festus Okoye has disclosed that the Anambra governor-elect, Charles Soludo and deputy-governor elect will be presented certificates of return on Friday.
According to Okoye in a statement on Thursday, “Following the conclusion of the election and as provided for in Section 75 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended), certificates of return will be presented to the Governor-elect and Deputy Governor-elect tomorrow Friday 12th November 2021 at our State office in Awka”, he stated.
“Never before did the Commission have to grapple with numerous issues ahead of an off-season Governorship election, including attacks on our facilities, withdrawals of critical service providers such as the ad hoc staff and transporters on the eve of the election and the general tension pervading the atmosphere. Happily, the election passed off peacefully”, Okoye stated.
ALSO READ: How FG misled Court to issue search warrant against Justice Odili
Commenting on the glitches experienced with the usage of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS, he said; “After the supplementary election in Ihiala Local Government Area on Tuesday 9th November 2021 and before the process was concluded, the Commission commenced a preliminary review of the functionality of systems, particularly the newly introduced Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS.
“The system performed two functions on election day. First is the accreditation of voters using both fingerprint and facial authentication. Secondly, it snaps the polling unit level result sheets and uploads them in real-time to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal. This aspect of the BVAS functionality performed optimally such that by the early hours of Sunday morning, results from 4,987 (88.5%) out of 5,634 polling units had been uploaded for public view. While still in the field, our ICT team responded to the identified glitches in the accreditation of voters and corrected them. Consequently, in the Ihiala supplementary election, there were no reported incidents of BVAS malfunction.
“We will carry out an in-depth examination of the system, review reports from accredited observers and the media and respond to all identified challenges ahead of the next major Area Council election in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), held on 12th February 2022.
“We shall again test run the system in the bye-election (s) that may arise before then. The Commission remains convinced that despite some glitches experienced in Anambra State Governorship election, the deployment of technology in elections is better than the best manual process”.
