The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) has said that there is no provision for the mandatory transmission of election results electronically in the Electoral Act 2022.
The two major opposition candidates, Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and Peter Obi of the Labour Party challenged President Bola Tinubu’s victory citing INEC failure to transmit results in real-time to the server.
“The Petitioners have failed to show that INEC is required to transmit electronically. It is my view that only collation system put in place is at the PU, LGAs and State collation centers only.
“This court holds that the Electoral Act does not specifically demand that the results of the election shall be electronically submitted.
“This court holds that there is no law that says INEC must mandatorily transfer or transmit the results of the election from the polling units electronically. The law empowers INEC to decide the means of collation of the results of elections in Nigeria,” the PEPT said.
The electoral body had assured Nigerians before the election that results would be transmitted in real time to show transparency in the process.
However, the Presidential election results were not.
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