The Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for Ekiti State, Bunmi Omoseyindemi, has said that the collation of results from Saturday’s governorship election will commence at 10 p.m.
Omoseyindemi disclosed this during Channels Television’s Ekiti election rundown programme, noting that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was already expecting results from the various local government areas of the state.
According to him, all necessary arrangements have been put in place to ensure a smooth collation process.
“We are expecting the results and will start the collation process by 10 o’clock on the dot,” he said.
The announcement came as the commission continued the upload of polling unit results to its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) following the conclusion of voting, sorting and counting across the state.
Addressing concerns over the pace of result uploads to the IReV portal, Omoseyindemi attributed the delays to poor network connectivity in some remote parts of the state.
According to him, electoral officials in several areas have struggled to access stable internet services needed to transmit results.
“We have areas where it is difficult to have network. Even in Ikere, people have to move out before they could get network, not to talk of some other areas. You know Ekiti is a very mountainous area and all these things affect network connectivity,” he said.
The REC, however, assured stakeholders and voters that all polling unit results would be uploaded to the IReV portal once electoral officers reach locations with adequate network coverage.
As of 9:30p.m., the commission had uploaded 2128 results out of the 2,445 expected polling unit results, representing 83.07 per cent of the total.
Voting ended in many polling units across Ekiti State before 3 p.m., after which election officials commenced the sorting and counting of ballots.
Residents turned out on Saturday to cast their votes in the election conducted by INEC across the state’s 16 local government areas.