The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has disclosed the underlying reason behind the malfunctioning of its result viewing portal, IReV, during the 2023 presidential election.
The commission, in a detailed report released on the first anniversary of the election, highlighted a configuration bug as the culprit behind the “HTTP server error” encountered during the presidential poll.
According to the report, INEC encountered difficulties in configuring the result mapping for the presidential and National Assembly (NASS) elections. The commission had created 470 election types, including one for the presidential constituency covering the entire country, 109 Senatorial Districts, and 360 Federal Constituencies.
However, the presidential election’s unique nature as a single, countrywide constituency led to failures in uploading the result sheets, resulting in the HTTP server error.
“In configuring and mapping the election results for the presidential and NASS elections,” the report reads, “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.”
“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 organization 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 organize the uploaded images of the result sheets of the presidential election.”
The IReV, aimed at promoting transparency by allowing real-time viewing of result sheets from polling units, faced challenges during the presidential election.
While most legislative election results were promptly uploaded, the presidential poll’s results were significantly delayed, sparking concerns over potential manipulation.
“It took nearly a week for a substantial number of the presidential election result sheets from the 176,849 polling units to be uploaded, by which time opposition figures had started alleging manipulation of the votes.”
After weeks of delays, the uploaded results on IReV were scrutinized, revealing discrepancies, notably in Rivers state, where votes for certain candidates were allegedly inflated or reduced.
“Also, the results eventually posted on IReV were analysed by several media and civil society organisations with a conclusion that the votes for Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), were inflated in Rivers state while those of Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP), were reduced.”
Despite these discrepancies, INEC emphasized that the overall outcome of the election reflected voters’ sentiments.
“Public commentaries have dwelled largely on the challenges of the election,” the report further reads. “Yet, the 2023 General Election produced the most diverse outcome in recent Nigerian electoral history in terms of party representation in executive and legislative elections nationwide. Thus, four (4) political parties produced State Governors, seven (7) secured Senatorial seats, eight (8) won federal constituencies and nine (9) in State seats,” the report said.
“A granular analysis of the results and performance of the leading parties across the country affirms this diversity. The performance of the four (4) leading political parties – APC, LP, PDP and NNPP – in the presidential election across the 6 geopolitical zones in respect of the required 25% threshold to win a state in a presidential election.
“Clearly, across the zones, the performance of the four (4) leading parties shows the diversity and subtlety in the results, attesting to the integrity of both the process and outcome.
“Thus, in the North Central Zone, the APC won 38.58% of the presidential vote, followed by LP with 31.01% and PDP with 25.46%. In the North-East, the PDP won 50.67% of the presidential vote, followed by the APC with 29.16%, and LP with 6.09%.
“In the North-West, the APC won 39.54, followed by the PDP with 34.87%, and LP with 4.08%. In the South-East, LP led with 87.79%, with the APC having 5.71% and the PDP 4.08%.
“Similarly, LP led in the South-South with 42.37%, followed by the APC with 27.99% and the PDP with 26.12%. In the South-West, the APC led with 53.59% followed by the PDP with 22.14% and the LP with 19.97%.”