Boma Achenimie 
Ahead of the anticipated November 11 governorship elections in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi States, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has assured Nigerians that there will be no technical difficulties when the results of the polls are uploaded to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
It would be recalled that in the 2023 elections as produced President Bola Tinubu as the 16th President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Governors, Senators and House of Representatives members the electoral umpire blamed technical issues for a significant problem with the results upload during the polls.
But while reassuring the masses, the Chief Press Secretary of the electoral body, Rotimi Oyekanmi, in an interview on Channels TV stated that there would not be a glitch.
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He said, “We have been using the IReV for all governorship elections, but it [2023] was the first time we deployed it for the general election setting. Well, we had a glitch for some hours, and we fixed it. But I can assure you that this time around we are not going to have glitches.
“I can affirm that those technical issues have been resolved. Last week, we undertook the mock accreditation, and one of the reasons we did that was to test run these technology gadgets we were going to use, and it was successful.”
Oyekanmi also stated that there could be technology downtime at any point, but noted that the body has learnt lessons from the conduct of the 2023 general elections.
He further stated, “Technology can throw up challenges, but by and large, we have learned our lessons from the 2023 general elections.”
Oyekanmi also clarified that what INEC does with the IRev portal is uploading and not transmission of results.
He said, “We are not transmitting; we are uploading. All we are doing is that we are taking a picture of the polling unit results and uploading same to the portal.”
