Some angry voters in the Kubwa area of Abuja have refused to allow ad-hoc officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to leave their polling unit over the officials’ failure to transmit results of Saturday’s presidential and national assembly election to INEC’s “server” using the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machine.
With INEC’s introduction of technology into various aspects of the country’s voting process, many young voters who participated in the exercise at Polling Unit 038 in Dantata Estate, Kubwa, Abuja, expected a high level of efficiency and convenience in the electoral process.
Some of the voters who spoke to THE WHISTLER vowed not to allow the INEC officials to leave the polling unit without uploading the results of the poll to a central result viewing portal in line with the commission’s directive. As of 6:43 PM, the officials were still being prevented from leaving.
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Oge Isema, a resident of the estate, narrated her experience: “We came and everything was going on normally and all of a sudden, the Presiding Officer said his battery (to the BVAS) had run down and we said how? He said they (INEC) did not give him a charger so we had to provide him with a charger and power bank. For like 35 minutes we paused before we continued
“Now, everything is over, the votes have been counted and we are now begging them to upload our results. But they are giving us three reasons. The NSCDC officer said he called their boss and they said it’s server issue. Then he (Presiding Officer) said they did not give him the password to the BVAS to upload our result.
“Now they are giving us an option that the party agents should follow them to God knows where but we are saying nobody is moving an inch from here until they uploaded our results (because) we suffered to get this PVC (Permanent Voters Card) after suffering to register and you cannot upload our votes?” she queried.
Aliyu Tunde, another voter who spoke to our correspondent, said “INEC officials uploaded results in other polling units after collation. I even called Kaduna, and after collation, they uploaded it to the server.
“We finished our own voting successfully and peacefully, now upload the result to the INEC server but you’re telling us that you don’t have the password. The only issue we have now is for him to upload the result successfully, that’s all.”
The polling unit has a total of 300 voters but only 209 got accredited and voted, out of which 3 votes were rejected as invalid.
Speaking to THE WHISTLER on the situation, E.O Adeniyi, an Assistant Superintendent of NSCDC deployed to the polling unit, said he tried persuading the voters to allow the party agents follow the INEC officials to the collation center for the results to be uploaded but they refused.
“All I believe is that my own is to supervise and ensure peace and order. I am not here to do anything otherwise.
“I have called the man in charge of the server and he said the server is down and he said they (the party agents) should follow them to the collation center so that they will upload it there.”
On what the INEC Presiding Officer said about not having the password required to upload the results, he said “I’m not in the server neither am I internet savvy. I don’t know anything about it but the only thing I know is that they told me the server is down.”
Results of the voting seen by our correspondent showed that the Labour Party won both the presidential and national assembly elections in the polling unit.