‘IREV Is Not Collection Center’ Tribunal Rule

The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has ruled that Labour Party (LP) candidate, Peter Obi failed to establish that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) intentionally refused to quickly upload polling unit results to Result Viewing Portal (IReV) so as to alter the results in President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s favour.

“The petitioner made the allegation of non-compliance a substantial part of their case. By the provisions of Section 135(2) of the Electoral Act, they are required to show how such noncompliance substantially affected them. If they fail to show the same, the petition fails,” the court ruled.

According to the PEPT, INEC regulations and the Electoral Act give room for manual collation of results. It said electronic transmission is optional at best.

The court added that the only device that must be used by INEC for elections is the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS),

It noted that there’s no regulation showing BVAS must be used to electronically transmit results from polling units.

On the issue of substantial non-compliance with the provisions of the law, especially with regard to non-transmission of result sheets to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), the court holds that there is no law that says INEC must transfer or transmit the results of the election from the polling units electronically.

The law simply empowers INEC to decide the means of collation of results of elections, the court argued.

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