Abuja, Feb. 22, 2023 – Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the INEC Chairman, says the raw election figures will not be transmitted electronically during Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections.
He said Presiding Officers would be required to use the BVAS machines to snap the election results on the results sheet from each polling unit and upload them on INEC Result Viewing Portal for Nigerians to see.
Yakubu, who was addressing a meeting of International Election Observers at the Commission’s head office on Wednesday, said the decision not to transmit raw figures electronically was taken to avoid hacking as raw figures were more susceptible to hacking.
He also said the decision not to transmit the raw figures would be the main difference between the Kenyan experience and what the commission was doing.
Yakubu said the elections would hold as planned because the Commission has mobilised all critical government institutions to ensure the success of the exercise.
He said that the BVAS, which had been deployed for the elections, were expected to perform three main functions.
“It confirms that the cards issued by the commission and presented by the voter is genuine and the voter is authenticated using the fingerprint and where it failed, the facial.
“Where both fail, the voter can’t vote. That is a matter of law.
“After the process is completed at the polling unit, the image of the polling unit result will be taken by the BVAS and uploaded into what we call the INEC Result Viewing Portal where citizens can see polling unit level results as type processes are completed at polling unit level.
“The difference between what Kenya did in 2015 and what we are doing is that we are not transmitting raw figures for collation.
“In fact, the law does not allow for electronic collation of results. So, we don’t transmit raw figures because raw figures transmitted online are more susceptible to hacking, while images of a document are not susceptible to hacking,” he said. (GBN)
