Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Saturday made a U-turn on transmitting the results of the November 11 governorship elections in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states manually.
The electoral body on Saturday revealed that it will transmit results from the governorship election electronically.
Bayelsa State Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Ofiong Efanga, at a press conference, said INEC would adopt a manual mode of transmission of the governorship election results.
INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, however, during the monitoring of the mock election in Lokoja, Kogi State, said whatever the Bayelsa REC said must be disregarded.
He said: “The method is as provided by law—electronic accreditation and electronic upload of results on the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal, and that is why we are doing this mock.
“So please disregard whatever was reported about what the REC was said to have said in Bayelsa and that is going to be the procedure. And it is for that reason that I will advise you also for those who have registered on the IReV portal, in the next two hours or so, they should go to the IReV portal, they will see the result of the mock from all three we are uploading, as we have done in previous elections.
“Well, so far, so good in terms of assurance from the security agencies, as we can see; they’re even here for the mock election, and next Friday, there is going to be a high-level meeting in Abuja, chaired by myself and the National Security Adviser, in which all the security chiefs will be present to discuss the issue of security for the three states.
“So we are on top of the situation in terms of security arrangements and security deployment.”