Dele Farotimi, an author and political activist, expressed his opinion that everything went smoothly during the February 25 presidential elections, except for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
According to Festus Okoye, the spokesperson for INEC, the failure of the Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) to transmit real-time results of the presidential election to the commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) was attributed to a “technical glitch.”
During the presidential election Tribunal, Okoye defended the commission by stating that the IReV portal functioned properly for the National Assembly, Governorship, and State Assembly polls.
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Both the IReV and BVAS are new technologies introduced by INEC to accredit voters and electronically transmit votes for this year’s elections. However, Nigerians were unable to view the real-time results of the presidential poll.
Speaking about the upcoming 2023 elections in an interview with Channels Television’s Politics Today program on Wednesday, July 5, Farotimi shared his views on the matter.
“All the evidences are very clear and it showed very clearly that everything that should work on that day worked except INEC.”
“The integrity of INEC as an institution went on exile.”
Farotimi also emphasized that INEC should have taken responsibility and apologized to Nigerians for the electoral body’s failure to fulfil its commitment to electronically transmitting election results to everyone during the polls.
“INEC is a public body established by law and bound to work according to the law. It advertised its guidelines…the advertisement of BVAS and IReV and everything. INEC was quite vociferous in explaining to Nigerians and assuring us of what would happen with the system.”
“In a sane environment where people are still governed by reason, the likes of Mr Festus Okoye should either have resigned or be somewhere writing a statement explaining to Nigerians what happened. Glitch? Is it a glitch in the human brain? A glitch in the technical system or a glitch occasioned by the complete shutdown of human conscience?” Farotimi added
