The Independent National Electoral Commission has stated that results from today’s governorship poll in Anambra State will be uploaded from the 5,634 polling units to its result-viewing portal.

It however said collation of results would be done manually as obtained in previous elections and not with the uploaded results.

The commission expressed confidence that the technological approach designed to enhance transparency in the election management process, would boost people’s confidence in elections and enable Nigerians to view polling unit results in real time as voting ends.

The innovation, though introduced in August 2020, was first used by the electoral body in the August 8, 2020 Nasarawa Central State Constituency bye-election and was later deployed in the Edo and Ondo states governorship elections held on September 19 and October 10, 2020, respectively.

Meanwhile, Okoye said the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System newly introduced by the commission would more or less replace the card readers going forward and would be used for voter registration, accreditation and uploading polling unit results to the result-viewing portal.

He said, “BVAS allows us to use one machine for the purposes of voter registration, accreditation – fingerprint and facial authentication – and uploading of polling unit results to our result-viewing portal. So, it’s a three-in-one solution. We are confident that the BVAS will perform well and it will be the dominant means of accreditation going forward.

“The commission will upload polling unit level results to our INEC result-viewing portal. We are confident that our new technological approach to elections will continue to yield results. We have trained all the ad hoc staff that would use the BVAS and the implication is that we have more or less retired the smart card reader as equipment for voter accreditation.”

Okoye said that the BVAS were dispatched to the local government areas since Thursday, adding that if any challenge arose, whether in the voting or logistics, the commission had the capacity to deal with them.