A former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Festus Okoye has provided new details regarding the technological failures that marred the uploading of the 2023 presidential election results, disclosing that the commission’s platforms faced cyberattacks.
Speaking during a recent interview on Deep Insights, Okoye addressed the widespread controversy surrounding the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal.
He confirmed that while the uploading of legislative election results proceeded smoothly, the system inexplicably failed specifically for the presidential results.
“In at least 80% of all the locations where the BVAS was deployed, the only challenge I saw looking back was the challenge of uploading polling unit-level presidential election results, which was critical,” Okoye explained.
“Elections for the Senate, House of Representatives, and the Presidency all took place on that same day. The only challenge we had in terms of real-time uploading of polling unit-level results was specifically with the presidential election. Nobody complained that the House of Representatives or Senatorial results were not uploaded.”
Recounting the internal crisis that unfolded at the INEC headquarters on election day, Okoye described how technical assurances quickly unraveled.
“When we received reports that presidential results were not uploading, the Chairman went straight to the ICT room,” he recalled.
“They assured him, ‘We are going to fix it in 10 minutes… 20 minutes.’ But 20 minutes turned into hours, and it escalated into a full crisis.”
The delay left INEC ad-hoc staff across the country vulnerable.
While acknowledging that the system was targeted by external actors, Okoye maintained that the primary issue was a fundamental technological malfunction.
“What really happened was that the technology malfunctioned. That is the truth of the matter,” Okoye insisted.
“For me, technology disappointed us. I said, okay, we need to tell Nigerians that this is the difficulty we are having and that we are trying to fix it. That is the plain truth of the matter, but people just don’t want to believe that technology failed.”
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