The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has appealed to the public not to dismiss the entire nationwide polls due to a glitch encountered during the upload of the presidential election held on February 25.

Festus Okoye, INEC National Commissioner, made this plea in response to the final report on the 2023 general elections submitted by the European Union Election Observation Mission on Monday.

Okoye urged Nigerians to refrain from judging the electoral commission solely based on the challenge faced while uploading the presidential election results. He emphasised that it would be unfair to evaluate the commission’s overall performance solely on this incident.

According to Okoye, the law empowers political parties to have knowledge of the activities taking place at the polling units. He pointed out that nearly all political parties nominated and accredited over 170,000 polling agents, meaning they had primary evidence of the results from the polling units.

“The results from the polling units, along with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) itself, are what goes to the collation centre,” Okoye explained. Therefore, it is inaccurate for a political party to rely solely on the result upload to gather the evidence required for legal proceedings.

Okoye, who also serves as the Chairman of INEC’s Information and Voter Education Committee, highlighted that Nigerians praised the electoral body for successfully implementing the BVAS in the general elections. He asserted that no one has contested the functionality of the BVAS regarding voter accreditation.