Ondo by-election: INEC vows to ensure uninterrupted voting despite telecom disruptions

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the Ondo South Senatorial District by-election, which has been peaceful despite some network-related challenges.

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The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Ondo State, Mr Mutiu Agboke, made this known in an interview with newsmen on Saturday in Okitipupa while monitoring the election.

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According to Agboke, the majority of polling units opened on schedule, with electoral officials arriving early to commence voting, and some polling units were fully operational as early as 7:43a.m.

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Agboke noted that voters showed enthusiasm to participate in the election, and electoral officials were at the polling units early, with most polling units opening on time.

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The REC also stated that security personnel were adequately deployed across the six local government areas participating in the election, and no incidents or casualties had been recorded.

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Agboke reported that the commission received reports of network difficulties affecting voter accreditation in some areas, which he described as a general technical challenge being addressed by INEC’s technical team.

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He explained that the technical issue was a centralized problem, and INEC’s technical team was working to resolve it, emphasizing the importance of responding professionally to any challenges that arise.

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Agboke said it was still too early to assess the level of voter turnout, noting that the commission would rely on statistics from its monitoring dashboard before making a definitive assessment.

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INEC National Commissioner, Prof. Kunle Ajayi, explained that election results would be uploaded electronically through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) after votes are counted at the polling units.

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Ajayi stated that the result sheets would first be completed and signed by party agents before being uploaded to IReV and physically moved through the various stages of collation.

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He clarified that the result sheets would be uploaded to IReV using the BVAS machine, and the physical copies would then move from the polling unit to the Registration Area collation centre, the local government collation centre, and finally the senatorial collation centre.

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Ajayi noted that IReV was designed only to display uploaded result sheets and not to automatically compute election results, emphasizing that the final result would be determined at the senatorial collation centre.

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The by-election is being conducted to fill the vacant Ondo South Senatorial seat following the appointment of former senator, Jimoh Ibrahim, as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.