Kimpact reveals irregularities in off-cycle election

By Abubakar Yunusa

A new report released by Kimpact Development Initiative (KDI) has revealed inconsistency in the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and that of the INEC result viewing portal (IREV) for the off-cycle governorship elections in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states held in November 11, 2023.

The non-governmental organisation, which advances good governance and democratic rights, said the inconsistency suggested high scale irregularities in Nigeria’s electoral system.

Presenting the document to journalists in Abuja, yesterday, Team Lead of KDI, Bukola Idowu, said the report carried out under the Ballot Integrity Project (BIP) analysed the election results data available on the IReV and evaluated the overall integrity of the electoral process in the 2023 Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states off-cycle governorship elections.

The report identified persistent challenges, including discrepancies in accreditation figures and missing ballot incidents, indicating systemic weaknesses in election management.

It also showed how the vulnerabilities in the current system may be allowing human made errors or other irregularities at the polling unit to sometimes scale through the layers of audit at the ward and local councils levels.

The study coded all the 10,168 Polling Units (PUs) form EC8A uploaded on the IReV. It analysed results from 2,202 PUs in Bayelsa state, 4556 PUs in Imo and 3,410 PUs in Kogi state.

According to the document, a total of 302 polling units’ results were not uploaded to IReV across the three states, noting that the commission only provided an explanation for 75 of these.

The report revealed that peculiar inconsistency surfaced in the aftermath of the 2023 Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi off-cycle governorship election, where election day voting was designated for 10,470 polling units, excluding the 38 and two units in Imo and Bayelsa, respectively without registered voters.

It said contrary to expectations, the IReV showcases only 10,168 uploaded polling unit results, leaving 302 results conspicuously missing as of the time of this report.

“While some may believe that the missing results were simply cancelled, a further examination of the data reveals a more complex narrative. The uploaded results on IReV include instances of form EC40G upload in locations where elections were cancelled either to overvoting, BVAS failure, or violence disruptions, indicating that these anomalies were among the 10,168 results uploaded.

The report observed that while the absence of details about 227 polling units might not sway the overall election outcome significantly, it delved into the core principles of transparency, accountability, and the commitment to open communication between Election Management Bodies (EMBs) and voters.