Why INEC Should Explain To Nigerians Why IREV Failed – Jega

Posted by Nwa Diokpa Featured, Latest Headlines, News Across Nigeria Friday, January 26th, 2024

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Professor Attahiru Jega, the former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has stated that the electoral commission needs to tell Nigerians why its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) did not work in the 2023 general elections.

The African Examiner recalls that the February 2023 presidential and National Assembly polls were affected by the controversies emanating from the failure of INEC officials to upload polling unit results to IReV in real time and this development made credibility to become an issue as opposition kicked against the announced result.

The Chairman of the commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, had stated then that the two technological interventions failed because of attempts by hackers to infiltrate its server and compromise the election results.

Speaking on the issue, Jega, when he appeared on Channels Television on Friday atated that although INEC meant well, some politicians circumvented the entire IReV and BVAS systems.

Jega said: “In 2023, INEC did its best under very difficult circumstances and a lot of these difficult circumstances were caused by the mindset of our selfish politicians who wanted to win by hook or by crook.

“INEC has overtime introduced technology to make the process of election results very transparent with integrity but from my own experience when I was in INEC from 2011 to 2015, and I suspect that a lot of that has continued to be so up to 2023, our reckless politicians try to be a step ahead of INEC; if you introduce something today and you try it, they try to be a step ahead of you and beat it by the next election. And of course, they can also use ways and means to not only truncate but also bypass something that has actually been put legitimately in order to add to the integrity of the process.

“If you ask my opinion, I feel very strongly that INEC needs to tell us more about what happened with the IReV. In fact, at one point, I was even calling for a thorough public inquiry about what happened with regards to IReV. I feel that something has happened, that in spite of the confidence and the very articulate manner the INEC chairman (Mahmood Yakubu) had spoken about the IReV and it then failed.

“I believe that some of our reckless politicians may have infiltrated it and truncated it but INEC will take the blame for that.”

The former INEC boss stated that once the court cases are resolved, “we need to go back to the bottom of what happened with the IReV”.