Former Independent National Electoral Commission national commissioner Dr Festus Okoye has stated that the Labour Party lost the 2023 general election because of poor organisational structure rather than issues with the commission's Result Viewing Portal, known as IReV.
Okoye shared his views on Friday during a training workshop organised for reporters of The Whistler newspaper ahead of the 2027 elections, according to a report by the outlet. He explained that political parties ought to set up functional networks across polling units, wards, local governments, and states to gather and compile their own figures independently.
He argued that relying on the electoral commission's online portal instead of maintaining an active internal collation system weakened the monitoring efforts of several political platforms. Okoye noted that ward chairpersons should collect results straight from polling agents and transmit them through official party channels before figures reach the national collation centre.
Speaking on the capacity of various political groups, Okoye noted that some platforms operate merely on paper and lack functional field operations. He cited an example from his time supervising elections in Kebbi State, pointing out that the Labour Party failed to field any candidate for the Kebbi State House of Assembly election.
Okoye also addressed the public controversy over the transmission of the 2023 presidential election results. He explained that technical hitches delayed the upload of presidential results even while figures for the House of Representatives appeared on the platform.
He said the delay raised concerns across the country because people anticipated real-time updates. According to Okoye, technical personnel fixed the issue, and presidential figures eventually started showing on the portal around 8:55 p.m. that evening.
He maintained that the problem was the delay in real-time transmission, not a complete failure to upload the documents. He urged political parties to invest in reliable grassroots organisation and train dedicated agents to safeguard their votes rather than blame external systems.
