THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has defended the transfer of Chidi Nwafor, its director in charge of Information Communication Technology (ICT), a few months before the 2023 national elections.
Following INEC’s failure to transmit results of the February 25 presidential election from polling locations to its portal in real time, there has been speculation over what went wrong, with many alleging that the commission overlooked Nwafor’s experience.
But, appearing on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, INEC National Commissioner Festus Okoye emphasized that the commission is structured in such a way that no section is centered on a single individual.
“The present leadership of the commission wants to build a professional organisation that is not wrapped around one individual. The individual (Nwafor) mentioned is a very good friend of mine; he is a director in the commission and any director can be posted out or to go and become an administrative secretary,” Okoye said.
“Now the time we readjusted list of administrative secretaries was the time the commission was slightly panicky on whether we were going to have new resident electoral commissioners and we were preparing for elections.
“So, the commission decided in its wisdom that we are going to post our best hands to the various states as administrative secretaries to go and prepare the states for the purposes of election and that was exactly what the commission did.
“We have a department in charge of ICT and the Chidi I know tried to build a department that can stand on its own whether he is there on not and that is the same thing with every department,” he added.
Okoye blamed INEC’s inability to transfer polling unit results directly to its portal in real time, as promised before the elections, on “technical issues,” which he said have been fixed in time for the March 18 gubernatorial and state assembly elections.
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