Chidi Nwafor, the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) director of information communication technology (ICT), was reassigned a few months prior to the 2023 general elections, and INEC has provided an explanation.
There have been disputes over what prevented the commission from using Nwafor’s experience, which many claims prevented the commission from uploading the results of the presidential election in real time.
Reacting to this during an interview on Channels Television, INEC National Commissioner Festus Okoye stated that the commission is built in a way that no department is wrapped around an individual.
He said:-
“The present leadership of the commission wants to build a professional organisation that is not wrapped around one individual. The individual (Nwafor) mentioned is a very good friend of mine; he is a director in the commission, and any director can be posted out or to go and become an administrative secretary.
“Now the time we readjusted list of administrative secretaries was the time the commission was slightly panicky on whether we were going to have new resident electoral commissioners and we were preparing for elections.
“So, the commission decided in its wisdom that we are going to post our best hands to the various states as administrative secretaries to go and prepare the states for the purposes of election and that was exactly what the commission did.
“We have a department in charge of ICT and the Chidi I know tried to build a department that can stand on its own whether he is there on not and that is the same thing with every department.”
Okoye also blamed INEC’s inability to transmit polling units results directly to its portal in real time as it promised before the elections to “technical glitches” which he said have been rectified ahead of the March 18 governorship and state assembly elections.
He assured Nigerians that the commission’s Result Viewing Portal will be functional during the March 18 elections.
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