By TNGnews
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has clarified that an unforeseen system error was the cause of the glitch that affected the uploading of Presidential election results on the INEC Result Viewing (IREV) portal during the 2023 general elections.
The Commission explained that a review of the system during the upload process revealed an unexpected configuration issue that hindered the mapping of the presidential election results to the respective Polling Units.
This clarification is included in the report from the commission’s stakeholder engagements and retreats, which were conducted between July 11 and August 5, 2023, to evaluate the conduct of the general elections.
The engagement involved a diverse range of stakeholders, including leaders from registered political parties, representatives from civil society organizations, Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs), Administrative Secretaries, members of security agencies involved in the Inter-agency Consultative Committee on Election Security, as well as executives from various media outlets.
The report indicated: “Throughout this review, numerous stakeholders sought clarity regarding the technical glitch that affected the upload of the 2023 Presidential election results. During the review process, technical experts from INEC provided comprehensive explanations regarding the issue.”
“In summary, the challenge of uploading the PU presidential election results on the IReV after the presidential and National Assembly elections held on February 25, 2023, was unique.”
In shedding light on the issue that seemed to undermine the credibility of the election, the report stated: “As voting concluded nationwide and polling officers commenced uploading images of the PU result sheets for the various constituencies around 4 PM, the commission began to receive reports indicating that the upload process for the presidential election result sheets was encountering failures.”
In response to these reports, the commission promptly coordinated with its field officials to gather information aimed at understanding and tracing the origin, source, scale, and magnitude of the issue within the result management ecosystem in order to formulate suitable solutions.
“During the troubleshooting process, it was confirmed that there were no issues with uploading the PU result sheets for the Senate and House of Representatives elections via the Election Result Modules. However, a problem was identified regarding the upload of the presidential election results to the system.”
Efforts to upload the results were resulting in internal server errors, which indicate a considerable disruption typically arising from within an application due to issues related to configuration, permissions, or the inability to correctly create or access application resources.
“Further investigation of the Election Result Modules revealed that the system is facing an unforeseen configuration issue when attempting to map the presidential election results uploaded into the system to the respective participating PUs.
The report, copies of which have been provided to the Senate and House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters, revealed that during the process of addressing the challenge, it was discovered that the backend system of the IReV could query and identify the base states for uploading the polling unit result sheets. This capability is 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 within the system’s database structure.
In mapping the election results for the presidential and National Assembly elections, the commission created 470 election types, including one presidential constituency for the entire country, 109 senatorial districts, and 360 federal constituencies.
