The Resident Electoral Commissioner for Rivers State, Dr. Johnson Alalibo, has appealed to voters in Rivers State and all stakeholders to remain calm and to trust the process of electioneering.
The commissioner also disclosed that elections will be conducted in places that had problem on Saturday and other places elections could not hold.
Alalibo gave the advice in a briefing on Sunday to journalists at the commission’s headquarters in Port Harcourt.
He explained that all results were collected maily from the polling units via forms EC8A, EC8A1, and ECSAA2.
Alalibo said the process went on smoothly in all the LGAs, though the presiding officers had a problem uploading results from polling units to the INEC result portal.
He blamed poor network which, he said, was a national issue.
He said he had received orders from the headquarters to conduct an election within 24 hours in all the areas the election did not hold due to one problem or the other.
Alalibo explained that section 473 of the electoral act 2023 allows the election to be conducted within 24 hours if the BIVAS malfunctions.
He said that the Commission was unable to deploy about seven registration areas out of 17 registration areas in Degema Local Government Area in the state.
He said the Commission would possibly conduct the election in the seven areas in Degema on Monday, Feb. 27.
Alalibo said that results collation at the state level would start immediately after the results arrived from the collation centers at the Commission headquarters in Rivers.
“We are yet to receive results from LGAs. I and the Commissioner of Police have been here waiting for the results, once they start coming in, we will start collation,” Alalibo said.
He said the collation would be going on simultaneously at other constituencies’ collation centers for the senatorial and House of Representatives elections.
Alalibo said that the headquarters would tackle the challenges of non-upload of ward results of some local government areas in the state from the polling units.
He said that the national headquarters would handle any issue of result that the state commission could not handle.
