The Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, has disclosed that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has introduced an electronic version of the EC8A result sheet on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to strengthen election result management ahead of the Osun governorship election and the 2027 general elections.
Itodo made the disclosure during an interview on ARISE TV monitored by The News Chronicle, where he discussed election result management. He explained that the innovation was introduced under Paragraph 40 of the Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of Elections and had already been test-run during the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Area Council elections and the Ekiti State governorship election.
According to him, under the new procedure, presiding officers are required to enter polling unit results into an electronic EC8A on the BVAS after completing the physical result sheet.
He explained that the scanned copy of the hard-copy result sheet does not appear immediately on the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), as many Nigerians assume.
Instead, he said, the uploaded result undergoes a validation process before it is published on the portal.
“The public needs to understand that once polling officials scan the result sheet, it does not hit the IReV directly. There is a validation process at the back end before those results are uploaded,” Itodo said.
He noted that the introduction of the electronic EC8A means that there are now three separate records of results generated from each polling unit.
According to him, these include the physical EC8A result sheet completed at the polling unit, the electronic EC8A entered on the BVAS, and the scanned image of the hard-copy result sheet uploaded to the IReV portal.
Itodo, however, raised concerns over the absence of clear guidelines on how discrepancies among the three records would be resolved.
“The big question is what happens if there is a discrepancy between these three different result tracks. We do not know which one will be used to resolve this,” he said.
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The Yiaga Africa executive director also faulted INEC for limiting public access to only polling unit result sheets on the IReV portal.
He noted that the commission had yet to publish Forms EC8B and EC8C, which are used for ward and local government collation of election results.
According to him, making the collation forms publicly available would enable citizens to track the movement of results from polling units through the various stages of collation until final declaration.
He recalled that INEC had previously pledged to upload the ward and local government collation forms and expressed hope that the new commission would fulfil that commitment.
Itodo urged the electoral umpire to issue a comprehensive protocol explaining the entire result management process, from polling units to the final declaration of results.
He said greater transparency would improve public understanding of the electoral process, strengthen oversight and help protect the integrity of votes in the forthcoming Osun governorship election and the 2027 general elections.
