Soludo, Deputy get Certificates of Return Friday

Anambra Governor-elect Professor Charles Soludo and his Deputy will be presented with Certificates of Return by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Friday

The Certificate will be presented at the Commission’s office in Awka, the state capital.

The Commission, in a statement by National Commissioner and Chairman Information and Voter Education Committee, Festus Okoye, said the Anambra poll was conducted under the most challenging circumstances.

The statement further revealed that the Commission has commenced preliminary review of the efficiency of the new technology introduced for the election

It added: “The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) met today Thursday 11th November 2021 and conducted an initial review of the Anambra Governorship election. The Commission is awaiting the reports of all officials deployed for the election for an in-depth review of the processes.

“However, after the supplementary election in Ihiala Local Government Area on Tuesday 9th November 2021 and before the process was concluded, the Commission commenced a preliminary review of the functionality of systems, particularly the newly introduced Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).

“The system performed two functions on election day. First is the accreditation of voters using both the fingerprint and facial authentication.

“Secondly, it snaps the polling unit level result sheets and uploads them in real-time to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal. This aspect of the BVAS functionality performed optimally such that by the early hours of Sunday morning, results from 4,987 (88.5%) out of 5,634 polling units had been upoladed for public view.

“While still in the field, our ICT team responded to the identified glitches in the accreditation of voters and corrected them. Consequently, in the Ihiala supplementary election, there were no reported incidents of BVAS malfunction. We will carry out an in-depth examination of the system, review reports from accredited observers and the media and respond to all identified challenges ahead of the next major Area Council election in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), holding on 12th February 2021.

“We shall again test run the system in the bye-election (s) that may arise before then. The Commission remains convinced that despite some glitches experienced in Anambra State Governorship election, the deployment of technology in elections is better than the best manual process”.