Mr. Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, a former Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Director of Publicity and Voter Education, has said electronic collation of results for the 2023 general elections was not compulsory.
Osaze-Uzzi spoke on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday.
According to him, the prescribed mode of collating results is manual, adding that Section 64 (4) of the Electoral Act empowers INEC to commence collating the result upon verification and confirmation of the result.
“The prescribed mode is the manual collation; it did not say you should collate electronically. There’s nowhere in the law, guidelines you will see electronic (collation of result),” Osaze-Uzzi said.
“Go back to (Section) 64 (4). Verification and confirmation that’s 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 does not say to start collating from the BVAS transmitted results. It says to start collation. In that sense, it’s a manual process,” he added.