Independent National Electoral Commission has expressed its commitment to deploy more technology and innovation to further enhance the transparency of the electoral process.
INEC said the use of its public viewing portal during the governorship elections in Edo and Ondo States eradicated possible electoral fraud as Nigerians saw the results of each polling unit online almost immediately after casting their ballots.
INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner in Akwa Ibom, Mike Igini, made this known Wednesday while featuring on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme.
He said with the deployment of the INEC results portal, the Nigerian media will soon start projecting election results like their counterparts in the United States.
Recall that most western media projected the victory of Democrat challenger Joe Biden over incumbent President Donald Trump in this year’s US election.
Igini, while speaking on Wednesday said the media has a role to play in election transparency and the INEC results portal will make it possible for the media to be fully involved in the monitoring and declaration of election results.
He said, “I can confirm that INEC has made tremendous progress. The INEC of today is no longer the INEC of before because since 2011, the kind of elections that we have conducted had a remarkable departure from where we used to be even though we are not where we are supposed to be.
“The INEC public viewing portal is a new innovation to deal with the recurring issues of vote changes at the level of collation and that was why it was introduced to ensure that at the polling unit, once the result is published, it should be sent to the viewing portals so that Nigerians can see it.
“The way we are going, I am very sure not too far from now, Channels Television, all other stations, will be able to do what the CNN and other television stations do in America by making projections.
“In Edo and Ondo States governorship elections, even before INEC made the declarations, there was no tension in the country because people already had access, they could see the results, that is where we are going.
“But the problem we are having is that the political elite of our country are the greatest threat to our country. They are in disarray; they are the ones attacking both the hardware and the software of INEC in order not to bring about credible elections in our country.”