2023 polls: How we survived naira swap, attacks, others

Says election results reflection of the voters’ will
‘Why upload of presidential poll result was slow’
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday told of the challenge posed by the naira swap to the conduct of last year’s general elections in the days leading to the commencement of the polls.

The election umpire, in a 526-page Report of 2023 General Election just released in Abuja, also opened up on the hiccups over the uploading of the results of the presidential election.

It attributed the problem to a technical challenge which, according to it, was later fixed by 8.55 pm on the election day.

The commission said the currency swap and the limit placed on cash withdrawals from banks made it difficult for it to pay for some critical items and services including fuel procurement and transportation of personnel and materials.

It said the situation “constituted encumbrances on the Commission’s operations for the payment to some unbanked service providers and the ability of particularly transport providers to service and fuel vehicles in boats and motorcycles in readiness for election duty.

“The prevailing fuel scarcity across the country and inadequate number of vehicles and boats for the transportation of election personnel and materials within the required timeframe posed a great challenge to the logistics plan for the election.

“This is more so considering the size and diversity of Nigeria, as well the state of national infrastructure.

“Indeed, election is the largest and most complex logistics undertaking in Nigeria involving the simultaneous movement of personnel and material to 176,846 polling units across 8,809 wards spread across 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in 36 states and FCT.”

But it said the most devastating of the challenges was the spate of attacks on its personnel and facilities by thugs, unknown gunpersons and arsonists nationwide.

“During the period between the 2019 General Election and 12th December 2022, the Commission suffered over 50 attacks on its buildings and facilities in various LGAs and State Offices across 15 States of the federation in which vehicles, office equipment and election materials were destroyed,” it said.

However, it submitted that the elections were not only generally free and fair because they reflected the wishes of Nigerians they were also “notable for their peaceful and orderly conduct, marked by the absence of significant instances of violence, with over 25% of registered voters casting their ballots.”

Going into the specifics, it said the analysis of the polls showed that no party was dominant while the spread of results across party lines was better than in all previous elections in the country.

The commission said the polls were unique in terms of keeping to the time table, the new 80 clauses in the Electoral Act and the introduction of new technologies which made voting easier.

The National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee, Mr. Sam Olumekun, in a statement on the release of the report, said: “On Thursday, 22nd February 2024, the Commission convened for its weekly meeting where the 2023 General Election Report was reviewed and approved for publication.

“In keeping with our tradition over the last four electoral cycles, and our commitment to transparency, we are pleased to announce the release of the official INEC report on the 2023 General Election.

“This comprehensive 526-page document, structured into 13 chapters and enhanced with 60 tables, 14 boxes and 10 graphs, offers an in-depth analysis of the election’s key processes, achievements and challenges, alongside valuable lessons learned.

“The Report showcases the election’s unparalleled diversity in party representation, demonstrating significant democratic progress.

“This election saw four political parties winning gubernatorial races, seven parties winning senatorial seats, eight in federal constituencies and nine in State legislatures, illustrating a broad shift in political representation across Nigeria.”

The commission described the elections as “perhaps the best planned and most innovative election in Nigeria.”

It said: “The election witnessed the highest number of eligible voters and voting locations across the country with the participation of over one million election duty officials and deployment of enormous logistic requirements including over 100,000 vehicles and about 4,000 boats protected by gunboats.

“Given the meticulous preparations for the election, the transparency of the entire electoral process, from the casting of the vote, the publication of the number of collected Permanent Voters Card for the election down to the polling unit level for the first time ever, the presence of security personnel, party agents, election observers and the media along the entire voting process and result collation chain, as well as the layers of stringent checks and control put in place by the Commission before making a declaration and return for an election, the outcome of the election, based on immutable provisions in the electoral legal framework is a true reflection of the wishes of the electorate.”

Explaining the uniqueness of the polls, INEC said: “Several other innovations by the Commission in the 2019-2022 period peculiarly made the 2023 General Election unique. It was the first general election to be conducted after the amendment of the Electoral Act 2022.

” Furthermore, the Presidential and National Assembly election, for the first time in two Electoral Cycles 2010-2015 and 2015-2019, held on schedule without postponement as a result of logistics or other challenges.

“Moreover, voter access to polling units was expanded countrywide after 25 years when in June 2021 the Commission converted the 56,872 Voting Points and Voting Point Settlements into full-fledged Polling Units, bringing the number of polling units in Nigeria to 176,846.

“In addition to expanding voter access to polling units, the Commission also relocated 749 polling units from inappropriate to more appropriate public facilities or open spaces to guarantee unencumbered access for all voters.

“Sequel to the forgoing, there was voter migration and inadvertently, de-congestion of some over-crowded polling units. This exercise is on-going as some polling units are still congested as a result of voter reluctance to relocate mainly for security consideration.”

Continuing, INEC said: “Polls opened on time in most polling stations and was generally smooth and orderly. There were some reports of technical glitches with the BVAS, although these were addressed by the roving technical staff assigned to address such issues. The counting, collation, and declaration of results process was largely peaceful, transparent, and credible nationwide.

“While the former was tailored to serve as the nerve centre for monitoring the conduct of elections across the 774 LGAs nationwide, the latter served as the venue for National Collation of results emanating from States. Throughout the electoral process, Election Monitoring Support Centres (EMSCs) in every state served as a vital source of field information and intervention.

“The National Situation Room was also set up for the conduct of the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly Elections, held on the 18th March 2023. This time, it was replicated in all 36 states. The Situation rooms both at the national and State level were managed by a team of experts from INEC, the security agencies and other relevant organisations.”

On the failure to upload Polling Unit results of the presidential election to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time at the close of polls on Saturday 25th February 2023, the commission said: “To begin with, it is important to note that the IReV portal is one of the most significant innovations introduced by the Commission prior to the 2023 General Election to promote the integrity and transparency of the electoral process. As a public-facing website, the IReV portal shows the images of the original Polling Unit result sheets as recorded in Form EC8A.

“The operational methodology and the concept behind the upload of results to the IReV for public viewing is quite simple. At the end of polls, Polling Unit results (Form EC8As) are scanned and uploaded to the IReV by the Presiding Officer(s). These results are then available for viewing to the public and all stakeholders.

“The system, which was first deployed during Nasarawa Central State Constituency bye-election in August 2020 and tested in 105 subsequent elections, including three (3) off-cycle governorship elections, has tremendously improved public confidence in the integrity and transparency of the Commission’s result management process.

“The challenge of uploading the PU presidential election results on the IReV after the presidential and NASS elections on 25th February 2023 was unique. As voting ended across the country and POs began the process of uploading the images of the PU result sheets of the elections for the various constituencies around 1 4:00pm, the commission began to receive reports that attempts to upload presidential election result sheets was failing.

“Following these reports, the Commission immediately engaged with its field officials for details in order to understand and trace the origin, source, scale and magnitude of the problems across the result management ecosystem to devise appropriate solutions.

“In the troubleshooting process, it was established that there was no issue in uploading the PU result sheets of the Senate and House of Representatives elections through the Election Result Modules.

“However, there was a problem with uploading the presidential election results to the system. Attempts to upload the results were generating internal server errors, which refer to a significant impairment that usually originate from within an application due to problems relating to configuration, permissions, or failure to create or access application resources correctly.

“Further interrogation of the Election Result Modules indicated that the system was encountering an unexpected configuration problem in mapping the presidential election results uploaded into the system to the participating Polling Units.

“Due to the complex, sensitive and critical nature of the systems and the real potential for malicious cyber attacks, the Commission immediately put in place several strict security and audit control measures to prevent any unfettered or elevated access to the Result Upload System.

“In the process of resolving the challenge, it was discovered that the backend system of the IReV was able to query and detect the base States for uploading the PU result sheets based on the mapping of all Senatorial District and Federal Constituency elections to the respective 36 States of the Federation and the FCT as established in the database structure deployed within the system.

“In configuring and mapping the election results for the presidential and NASS elections, the Commission created Four Hundred and Seventy (470) election types consisting of one presidential constituency covering the entire country, 109 Senatorial Districts and 360 Federal Constituencies.

“Each Senatorial District and Federal Constituency election on the database was mapped to their respective states. However, the presidential election result is a single, countrywide constituency and therefore, does not belong to any one state.

“Consequently, while the uploads for the NASS elections succeeded as the application was able to identify the respective state and build the folder hierarchy for the results organisation process for the election, attempts to upload the presidential election results sheets, which does not belong to or mapped to any State on the database, failed. Instead, it returned a HTTP server error response.

“This failure is attributable to the inability of the application to create and build a folder structure to organise the uploaded images of the result sheets of the presidential election. Having identified and established the source of the problem, the Commission quickly created and deployed ‘Hotfixes’ which are software updates for fixing a bug or any vulnerabilities in a system.

“The deployed hotfixes eventually resolved the HTTP error on the system and the first presidential election result sheet was successfully uploaded at 8.55pm on the 25th of February 2023. After the problem with the upload was resolved, the Commission noticed a high volume of uploads on the queue.

“All results that scanned but could not be uploaded due to the error were queued waiting to be automatically processed. Due to the large volume and high traffic from the queue, the system was running slower, even though it tried to scale up automatically to handle the unanticipated heavy traffic.

“The density of the traffic that slowed the uploads was one issue. Another was that the offline queue requires the BVAS devices to be switched on and connected to the internet for the upload. However, some of the POs had at the time left their PUs, and the devices had either been switched-off, or were out of internet coverage.

“Switched-off devices could not connect and upload the results sheets. The Commission had to reach out to the POs of affected areas to switch on their systems and ensure internet connectivity for the uploads to continue. This accounted for the delay, with some of the results coming in the next day.

“By and large, the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of PU presidential election result sheets on 25th February 2023 was due to the inherent complexity within the System, which was difficult to anticipate and mitigate.

Thereafter, the Commission has made improvements on the IReV and taken additional steps to build more resilience and undertook additional checks to ensure the stability and optimal operation and performance of the IReV portal. Additional Quality assurance checks are now done to complement the end-to-end testing of the entire result upload ecosystem before the conduct of any election.

“However, the glitch in the upload of the presidential results sheets to iREV did not affect the credibility of the election. Agents of political parties and security agents were given copies of polling station results after they were announced in public.

“The results were also displayed at polling units for scrutiny by voters. So, when they were eventually uploaded, it was easy to compare them with the copies displayed at polling centres and given to party agents and party officials.”

[TheNation]

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