By James Orji
Professor Charles Soludo, the Anambra state Governor-elect will be issued Certificate of Return on Friday, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC has said.
Soludo, a former CBN Governor and flagbearer of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA emerged winner in the last Saturday governorship election by polling 103,946 votes. His closest rival in the election Valentine Ozigbo of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP who scored 51,322 votes has congratulated him, while Andy Uba of the APC has rejected the outcome of the election, alleging it was rigged.
“The outcome of the election was a charade and did not reflect the wishes of the people of Anambra State”, said Ambassador Jerry Ugokwe, spokesperson of the Senator Andy Uba Campaign Organization, in a statement on Thursday.
In spite of this, the National Commissioner and Chairman, Information and Voter Education Committee of INEC, Festus Okoye said the election umpire will go ahead to issue Soludo certificates of return.
Okoye said in a statement on Thursday that, “following the conclusion of the election and as provided for in Section 75 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended), certificates of return will be presented to the Governor-elect and Deputy Governor-elect tomorrow Friday 12th November 2021 at our State office in Awka”, he stated.
He said INEC successfully conducted the Anambra governorship election despite various challenges encountered because “never before did the Commission have to grapple with numerous issues ahead of an off-season Governorship election, including attacks on our facilities, withdrawals of critical service providers such as the ad hoc staff and transporters on the eve of the election and the general tension pervading the atmosphere. Happily, the election passed off peacefully”, Okoye stated.
He explained that INCE will not abandon the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System BVAS, some teething challenges experienced during the election.
According to him, “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 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 uploaded 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), held on 12th February 2022.
“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”.
