The transfer of a former IT director, according to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has nothing to do with technical difficulties that occurred during the uploading of the results of the presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25.
This was said on Thursday in Abuja by Rotimi Oyekanmi, chief press secretary to INEC Chairman, in response to claims that Chidi Nwafor, INEC’s former director of ICT, was transferred as a result of problems with the INEC Result Viewing Portal, or IReV, during the presidential election on February 25.
Such a suggestion, according to Mr. Oyekanmi, is merely an effort to deceive the public.
“First, it should be noted that the IReV and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) are two separate and independent organizations.
The two are related in that the BVAS is used to send the Voters’ Accreditation Data and the image of Form EC8A, the Polling Unit Result Sheet, in PDF format, to the IREV.
The BVAS, which in any case did its job exceptionally well on election day, could not have been influenced by the problems experienced by the IReV for a few hours on February 25. If there is no network at the polling unit at the time of the activity, there is also a mechanism for the BVAS to communicate the Polling Unit (PU) results in offline mode.
The errors may have happened even if the previous ICT Director was still in control, according to Mr. Oyekanmi.
I was unable to use Facebook, WhatsApp, or Twitter for several hours recently due to significant bugs that affected all of these services.
But ultimately, the aforementioned businesses overcame the difficulties.
“So, would you argue that the errors happened solely because one Engineer left the organization or was reassigned within it? Not.
While the former ICT Director is undoubtedly a valued, intelligent employee who performed his duties admirably, Mr. Oyekanmi asserted that other employees within the Commission were as capable of filling his old position.
Additionally, Mr. Oyekanmi denied the assertions that the previous director’s promotion to Administrative Secretary in another State amounted to a demotion.
“Again, I would suggest that the post of administrative secretary is an elevation, in contrast to the perception that it is a relegation.
“Our State office’s administrative secretary is the second-most senior employee there, behind the resident electoral commissioner (REC).
Similar to a permanent secretary position in a federal parastatal.
“The administrative secretary serves as an acting REC when the REC is absent. That demonstrates how crucial the job is, he said.
Contrary to claims that the gadget was created by Nwafor or a specific member of the commission’s staff, Mr. Oyekanmi added that the BVAS was the commission’s idea and invention, just as the now-retired Smart Card Reader (SCR).
“After deciding to create the BVAS, the commission assigned the task to the IT department because it was the most appropriate department within the commission to carry it out.
The ICT Department is made up of a big group of outstanding Engineers and IT specialists who worked tirelessly as a team for several months to realize the commission’s vision.
“The IT Department informed the commission when the task of designing the BVAS was finished.
Hence, it is incorrect to imply that a former director of ICT, or any other staff member for that matter, created the BVAS alone.
If anyone should be credited for the creation, according to Mr. Oyekanmi, it should be INEC Chairman Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, as well as the commission that came up with the idea in the first place.
