Three INEC Presiding Officers (POs) revealed yesterday that only Senate and House of Representatives results were successfully sent from the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
The summoned witnesses testified in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Atiku Abubakar’s appeal that BVAS’s delay to send the presidential election results on election day hindered their work.
Atiku and the PDP are appealing the February 25 presidential election.
Their appeal alleges that INEC failed to submit election results to its IREV in real time, as Chairman Mahmood Yakubu had promised before the election.
The three INEC Presiding Officers in Yobe, Bauchi, and Katsina states, Janet Nuhu Turaki, Christopher Bulus Ardo, and Victoria Sani, politely told the PEPC that the election process ran well until the BVAS machines failed.
Gombe State voting unit presiding officer Janet Turaki testified first.
Turaki, who took an oath, testified that voter accreditation and voting went smoothly, but posting the results was cumbersome.
The witness said that she was conversant with computers during INEC’s cross-examination.
She noted that the presidential election results failed and refused to operate all day, unlike the National Assembly results.
The witness stated party agents signed INEC Forms EC8As after she input voting unit scores.
The witness stated that the results of the Senate and House of Assembly were posted but not the presidential outcome.
The witness told Mahmoud, “We were educated that when we find ourselves where there is no network, we undertake offline transmission, but it could not upload.”
“I don’t know, actually,” INEC counsel answered when asked whether the offline transfer succeeded.
INEC instructed the witness to give over the physical copy of Form EC8A (polling unit result sheet) to her Ward level superior even if she could not upload electronically using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS equipment.
She noted that the election at her polling unit was 100% successful except for the inability to submit presidential election results electronically.
She told APC attorney Charles Edosanwam that her polling unit merely failed to upload presidential election results.
Christopher Bulus, an INEC ad-hoc presiding officer in Bauchi State, stated BVAS offline transmission failed.
He was dissatisfied with the voting process since INEC instructed polling units to submit presidential election results.
Counsel for Tinubu questioned the witness whether his inability to submit scanned presidential results may have compromised his Form EC8A recording.
“I cannot tell since as a presider officer, I was supposed to submit the result sheet to the Ward collation facility. No idea.”
APC legal team cross-examination yielded the same response.
Following him, Niger state presiding officer Victoria Sani told the court that she accredited voters using the BVAS system, recorded the scores of all political parties on Form EC8A, and could not use it to transmit presidential election results after parties signed it.
She agreed with INEC’s counsel that scanned results submitted offline may transfer to the IREV site later, especially when there is a network.
She stated that Tinubu’s counsel cross-examined her on a party agent’s complaint at the polling unit over the transmission of presidential election results.
