Electronic Collation Of Results Not Compulsory – Ex-INEC Spokesman

A former Director of Voter Education and Publicity of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, on Tuesday, said electronic collation of results for the 2023 general elections was not compulsory.

Osaze-Uzzi, who spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today, said the prescribed mode of collating results is manual.

Making reference to Section 64 (4) of the Electoral Act, the former INEC spokesman said section empowers the electoral commission to start collating the result upon verification and confirmation of the result.

“The prescribed mode is the manual collation; it didn’t say you should collate electronically. There is nowhere in the law, guidelines you will see electronic (collation of result),” he stated.

“Go back to (Section) 64 (4). Verification and confirmation, that is what is required with the electronically transmitted. But collation is still manual.

“Before you start that process, you must go to the electronic ones and say ‘Are these figures consistent?’ It doesn’t say to start collating from the BVAS, transmitted results. It says to start collation. Before you start collation, look at it and if the figures are the same, you gather all the EC8As together. In that sense, it is a manual process.”