The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has expressed satisfaction with the conduct of the Ondo South Senatorial District by-election.

The commission said the exercise has so far been peaceful despite some network-related challenges.

The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Ondo State, Mutiu Agboke, said this in an interview with journalists on Saturday in Okitipupa while monitoring the election.

Mr Agboke said that the majority of polling units opened on schedule with electoral officials arriving early to commence voting.

He said some polling units were fully operational as early as 7:43 a.m., reflecting INEC’s commitment to ensuring a smooth process.

“We saw enthusiasm among voters to participate in the election. Our officials were at the polling units early and, largely, most of the polling units opened on time,” he said.

The REC noted that security personnel were adequately deployed across the six local government areas participating in the election, adding that no incidents or casualties had been recorded.

He said the commission received reports of network difficulties affecting voter accreditation in some areas, describing the situation as a general technical challenge being addressed by INEC’s technical team.

“It is something from the centre and our technical team is looking at it. We are using machines and anything can happen.

What is important is our ability to respond professionally and resolve any challenge that arises,” he said.

Mr Agboke said it was still too early to assess the level of voter turnout, noting that the commission would rely on statistics from its monitoring dashboard before making a definitive assessment.

Also speaking, INEC National Commissioner, Kunle Ajayi, explained that election results would be uploaded electronically through the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) after votes are counted at the polling units.

Mr Ajayi said the result sheets would first be completed and signed by party agents before being uploaded to IReV and physically moved through the various stages of collation.

“After counting at each polling unit and entering the scores in the appropriate forms, the result sheets will be uploaded to IReV using the BVAS machine.

“The physical copies will then move from the polling unit to the Registration Area collation centre, the local government collation centre and finally the senatorial collation centre,” he said.

The national commissioner clarified that IReV was designed only to display uploaded result sheets and not to automatically compute election results.

“Some people think that IReV automatically provides total scores. No, it does not. It only displays the uploaded result sheets. The final result will be determined at the senatorial collation centre where all scores are collated,” he explained.

The by-election is being conducted to fill the vacant Ondo South Senatorial seat following the appointment of former senator Jimoh Ibrahim as Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. 

(NAN)