The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) on Wednesday ruled that the Independent National Electoral Commission is at liberty to determine its mode of transmission of results.
According to the PEPT, INEC regulations and the Electoral Act gave room for manual collation of results. It said electronic transmission is optional at best.
The court added that the only device that must be used by INEC for elections is the Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS)
It noted that there’s no regulation showing BVAS must be used to electronically transmit results from polling units.
On the issue of substantial non-compliance with the provisions of the law, especially with regard to non-transmission of result sheets to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), the court held that there is no law that says INEC must transfer or transmit the results of the election from the polling units electronically.
The law simply empowers INEC to decide the means of collation of results of elections, the court argued.