President and founder of the Anap Foundation, Atedo Peterside, has questioned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) over the failure to upload results from 62 polling units on its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) following the Osun State governorship election.
Peterside raised the concern in a post on X on Sunday, a day after INEC declared the incumbent governor, Ademola Adeleke, winner of the election.
According to him, as of 8:50am on Sunday, 98.35 per cent of the results from the 3,763 polling units in the state had been uploaded to the IReV portal, leaving results from 62 polling units outstanding.
He said although the outstanding results were unlikely to affect the outcome of the election given Adeleke’s margin of victory, INEC still had a responsibility to explain why they had not been uploaded.
“INEC must still explain why they have NOT uploaded the results from 62 Polling Units out of 3,763 Polling Units,” Peterside said.
He also urged Nigerians and other stakeholders to remain vigilant and scrutinise the electoral process, stressing that transparency and accountability remained essential to strengthening public confidence in elections.
Peterside further argued that the Osun election demonstrated the importance of voter participation in reducing the possibility of electoral malpractice.
He noted that the election recorded a voter turnout of 43.4 per cent, which he described as high by recent Nigerian standards, arguing that increased voter participation was one of the strongest safeguards against rigging.
The former banker said stakeholders must continue to hold INEC accountable over its conduct of elections, even where outstanding results may no longer have an impact on the final outcome.
INEC declared Adeleke winner of the Osun governorship election after he secured 511,067 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who polled 444,815 votes.
The issue of the outstanding IReV uploads comes amid renewed calls for greater transparency in Nigeria’s electoral process and full compliance with electronic transmission and publication of polling-unit results.
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