INEC insists iRev failure didn’t affect presidential election despite evidence

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has released its full report for the 2023 elections, detailing for the first time the reasons behind the malfunctioning of its election results viewing platform, iRev, during the 2023 presidential election.

The electoral maintained the iRev failure did not affect the credibility of the polls despite reviews that showed disparities between its declared result and those on the digital platform.

Before the release of the new report on Friday, INEC had only reported that the iRev failed due to a “technical glitch” it did not explain.

The new report says the platform encountered “internal server errors” and “unexpected configuration problems” while attempting to map presidential election results. These issues, attributed to the system’s complexity and security measures, delayed the upload of results for several hours.

Additionally, some polling stations had switched off their devices or lacked internet connectivity at the time the situation was resolved, further hindering the process.

“By and large, the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of PU presidential election result sheets on 25th February 2023 was due to the inherent complexity within the System, which was difficult to anticipate and mitigate,” the report states.

However, INEC maintains that “the glitch in the upload of the presidential results sheets to iREV did not affect the credibility of the election” because agents of political parties and security agents were given copies of polling station results after they were announced in public.

“The results were also displayed at polling units for scrutiny by voters. So when they were eventually uploaded, it was easy to compare them with the copies displayed at polling centres and given to party agents and party officials,” it said.

Previous reviews of the process questioned this claim. Reports by BBC and Premium Times, based on independent collation of results on the iRev, showed the commission announced a different result from those presented on the iRev, with the Labour Party winning in Rivers state.

The electoral commission declared the All Progressives Congress winner of the oil-rich state. In October, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the APC.

What INEC said:

The 2023 General Election was generally peaceful and orderly nationwide. Most of the challenges encountered in the pre-election, election and post-election periods were discussed in the preceding sections of this Report. However, a key challenge that impacted on the public perception of the election and elicited widespread commentary is the failure to upload Polling Unit results of the presidential election to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal in real-time at the close of polls on Saturday 25th February 2023.

To begin with, it is important to note that the IReV portal is one of the most significant innovations introduced by the Commission prior to the 2023 General Election to promote the integrity and transparency of the electoral process. As a public-facing website, the IReV portal shows the images of the original Polling Unit result sheets as recorded in Form EC8A. The operational methodology and the concept behind the upload of results to the IReV for public viewing is quite simple. At the end of polls, Polling Unit results (Form EC8As) are scanned and uploaded to the IReV by the Presiding Officer(s).

These results are then available for viewing to the public and all stakeholders. The system, which was first deployed during Nasarawa Central State Constituency bye-election in August 2020 and tested in 105 subsequent elections, including three (3) of-cycle governorship elections, has tremendously improved public confidence in the integrity and transparency of the Commission’s result management process.

The challenge of uploading the PU presidential election results on the IReV after the presidential and NASS elections on 25th February 2023 was unique. As voting ended across the country and POs began the process of uploading the images of the PU result sheets of the elections for the various constituencies around 4:00pm, the Commission began to receive reports that attempts to upload presidential election result sheets was failing.

Following these reports, the Commission immediately engaged with its field officials for details in order to understand, and trace the origin, source, scale and magnitude of the problem across the result management ecosystem to devise appropriate solutions. In the troubleshooting process, it was established that there was no issue in uploading the PU result sheets of the Senate and House of Representatives elections through the Election Result Modules. However, there was a problem with uploading the presidential election results to the system.

Attempts to upload the results were generating internal server errors, which refer to a significant impairment that usually originate from within an application due to problems relating to configuration, permissions, or failure to create or access application resources correctly. Further interrogation of the Election Result Modules indicated that the system was encountering an unexpected configuration problem in mapping the presidential election results uploaded into the system to the participating Polling Units.

Due to the complex, sensitive and critical nature of the systems and the real potential for malicious cyberattacks, the Commission immediately put in place several strict security and audit control measures to prevent any unfettered or elevated access to the Result Upload System. In the process of resolving the challenge, it was discovered that the backend system of the IReV was able to query and detect the base States for uploading the PU result sheets based on the mapping of all Senatorial District and Federal Constituency elections to the respective 36 States of the Federation and the FCT as established in the database structure deployed within the system.

In configuring and mapping the election results for the presidential and NASS elections, the Commission created Four Hundred and Seventy (470) election types consisting of one presidential constituency covering the entire country, 109 Senatorial Districts and 360 Federal Constituencies. Each Senatorial District and Federal Constituency election on the database was mapped to their respective States. However, the presidential election result is a single, countrywide constituency and therefore, does not belong to any one State.

Consequently, while the uploads for the NASS elections succeeded as the application was able to identify the respective State and build the folder hierarchy for the results organization process for the election, attempts to upload the presidential election results sheets, which does not belong to or mapped to any State on the database, failed. Instead, it returned a HTTP server error response.

This failure is attributable to the inability of the application to create and build a folder structure to organize the uploaded images of the result sheets of the presidential election. Having identified and established the source of the problem, the Commission quickly created and deployed “Hotfixes” which are software updates for fixing a bug or any vulnerabilities in a system. The deployed hotfixes eventually resolved the HTTP error on the system and the first presidential election result sheet was successfully uploaded at 8.55pm on the 25th of February 2023.

After the problem with the upload was resolved, the Commission noticed a high volume of uploads on the queue. All results that scanned but could not be uploaded due to the error were queued waiting to be automatically processed. Due to the large volume and high traffic from the queue, the system was running slower, even though it tried to scale up automatically to handle the unanticipated heavy traffic.

The density of the traffic that slowed the uploads was one issue. Another was that the offline queue requires the BVAS devices to be switched-on and connected to the internet for the upload. However, some of the POs had at the time left their PUs, and the devices had either been switched-of, or were out of internet coverage. Switched-of devices could not connect and upload the results sheets. The Commission had to reach out to the POs of affected areas to switch-on their systems and ensure internet connectivity for the uploads to continue. This accounted for the delay, with some of the results coming in the next day.

By and large, the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of PU presidential election result sheets on 25th February 2023 was due to the inherent complexity within the System, which was difficult to anticipate and mitigate.

However, the glitch in the upload of the presidential results sheets to iREV did not affect the credibility of the election.

Agents of political parties and security agents were given copies of polling station results after they were announced in public. The results were also displayed at polling units for scrutiny by voters. So when they were eventually uploaded, it was easy to compare them with the copies displayed at polling centres and given to party agents and party officials. The 2023 General Election produced the most diverse outcome in recent Nigerian electoral history in terms of party representation in executive and legislative elections nationwide.