On Saturday, February 25, Nigerians went to the polls to elect a new president who will succeed Muhammadu Buhari.
The country’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has a huge task of delivering a credible election that is so close to call.
However, on February 26, the electoral commission in a statement announced that the elections portal had encountered technical hitches in results viewing.
“The Commission is aware of challenges with the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV). Unlike in off-season elections where the portal was used, it has been relatively slow and unsteady.
The Commission regrets this setback, especially because of the importance of IReV in our results management process.
The problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, State elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections.
It is indeed not unusual for glitches to occur and be corrected in such situations,” read the statement.
The statement caught the attention of former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Commissioner Boya Molu, who has managed a number of Kenyan polls.
“This may be undesirable but it is a normal occurrence in deployments of technology in election management particularly in Result Transmission Systems," he stated.
"Kenya was at this stage in 2013 and to some extent in 2017 but got it absolutely right in 2022,” he remarked.
Molus’s comment came on the backdrop of a disputed election in Kenya where the Azimio Leader Raila Odinga rejected the outcome of the August 9, 2022 elections.
In the elections, President William Ruto of Kenya Kwanza Coalition floored former Prime Minister Raila Odinga of the Azimio La Umoja Coalition.
Odinga has since claimed vote tampering by the electoral body IEBC which resulted in an election petition at Kenya's Supreme Court where his case was defeated.
Molu retired on January 17 after his term at the commission elapsed. Former Chair Wafula Chebukati and Commissioner Abdi Guliye also retired.
Nigeria's elections have seen former President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed to lead a 90-member team of African Union election observation mission (AUEOM) who will camp in various parts of the country to observe electoral material distribution, final campaigns, voter tallying and security around elections.
