Headline

INEC Admits IReV Portal Experienced Challenges During 2023 Presidential Election

Published

2 years ago

February 23, 2024

Editor

The Independent National Electoral Commission has acknowledged that a glitch affected the seamless operation of the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) during the 2023 presidential election.

The electoral body primarily attributed the glitch to the intricate, sensitive, and critical nature of the systems, coupled with the genuine threat of malicious cyberattacks.

The IReV portal is one of the most significant innovations introduced by the commission before the 2023 General Elections to promote the integrity and transparency of the electoral process.

As a public-facing website, the IReV portal shows the images of the original Polling Unit result sheets as recorded in Form EC8A.

INEC has, however, admitted that the IReV portal experienced challenges during the 2023 General Elections.

INEC revealed this in a document released on Friday, February 23, 2024, titled “Reports of the General Election”.

The 526-page long report was published by the commission on its website.

The report partly read, “The challenge of uploading the PU presidential election results on the IReV after the presidential and NASS elections on 25th February 2023 was unique.

“As voting ended across the country and POs began the process of uploading the images of the PU result sheets of the elections for the various constituencies around 4:00 pm, the commission began to receive reports that attempts to upload presidential election result sheets were failing.

“Following these reports, the commission immediately engaged with its field officials for details in order to understand and trace the origin, source, scale and magnitude of the problem across the result management ecosystem to devise appropriate solutions.”

Response to IReV glitch…

The electoral commission admitted there was a configuration error which was discovered when its technical expertise team embarked on resolving the server error. It added that the issue was only peculiar to the presidential election which was held on the same day as the national assembly elections.

“In the troubleshooting process, it was established that there was no issue in uploading the PU result sheets of the Senate and House of Representatives elections through the Election Result Modules.

“However, there was a problem with uploading the presidential election results to the system. Attempts to upload the results were generating internal server errors, which refer to a significant impairment that usually originates from within an application due to problems relating to configuration, permissions, or failure to create or access the application resources correctly.

“Further interrogation of the Election Result Modules indicated that the system is encountering an unexpected configuration problem in mapping the presidential election results uploaded into the system to the participating Polling Units.

“Due to the complex, sensitive and critical nature of the systems and the real potential for malicious cyberattacks, the Commission immediately put in place several strict security and audit control measures to prevent any unfettered or elevated access to the Result Upload System.

“In the process of resolving the challenge, it was discovered that the backend system of the IReV was able to query and detect the base States for uploading the PU result sheets based on the mapping of all Senatorial District and Federal Constituency elections to the respective 36 States of the Federation and the FCT as established in the database structure deployed within the system.

“In configuring and mapping the election results for the presidential and NASS elections, the Commission created Four Hundred and Seventy (470) election types consisting of one presidential constituency covering the entire country, 109 Senatorial Districts and 360 Federal Constituencies. Each Senatorial District and Federal Constituency election on the database was mapped to their respective states.

“However, the presidential election result is a single, countrywide constituency and therefore, does not belong to any one state.”

IReV glitch HTTP server error…
Explaining how the agency addressed the “server error” issue, the document further stated, “Consequently, while the uploads for the NASS elections succeeded as the application was able to identify the respective state and build the folder hierarchy for the results organisation process for the election, attempts to upload the presidential election results sheets, which does not belong to or mapped to any state on the database, failed.

“Instead, it returned an HTTP server error response. This failure is attributable to the inability of the application to create
and build a folder structure to organise the uploaded images of the result sheets of the presidential election.

“Having identified and established the source of the problem, the commission quickly created and deployed “Hotfixes” which are software updates for fixing a bug or any vulnerabilities in a system.

“The deployed hotfixes eventually resolved the HTTP error on the system and the first presidential election result sheet was successfully uploaded at 8.55pm on the 25th of February 2023.

“After the problem with the upload was resolved, the commission noticed a high volume of uploads on the queue. All results that were scanned but could not be uploaded due to the error were queued waiting to be automatically processed.

“Due to the large volume and high traffic from the queue, the system was running slower, even though it tried to scale up automatically to handle the unanticipated heavy traffic.

“The density of the traffic that slowed the uploads was one issue. Another was that the offline queue required the BVAS devices to be switched on and connected to the internet for the upload.

“However, some of the POs had at the time left their PUs, and the devices had either been switched off or were out of internet coverage. Switched-off devices could not connect and upload the results sheets.

“The commission had to reach out to the POs of affected areas to switch on their systems and ensure internet connectivity
for the uploads to continue. This accounted for the delay, with some of the results coming in the next day.”

IReV glitch prompts improvement…
Meanwhile, the electoral commission also noted that the glitch experienced in uploading the scanned images of PU
presidential election result sheets on 25th February 2023 was due to the inherent complexity within the System, which was difficult to anticipate and mitigate.

Notably, it insisted that there has been room for improvement.

“Thereafter, the commission has made improvements on the IReV and taken additional steps to build more resilience and undertook additional checks to ensure the stability and optimal operation and performance of the IReV portal.

“Additional quality assurance checks are now done to complement the end-to-end testing of the entire result upload ecosystem before the conduct of any election,” it added.

IReV glitch does not affect result…
INEC also said the glitch did not in any way affect the outcome of the presidential election result.

“However, the glitch in the upload of the presidential results sheets to iREV did not affect the credibility of the election.

“Agents of political parties and security agents were given copies of polling station results after they were announced in public. The results were also displayed at polling units for scrutiny by voters.

“So when they were eventually uploaded, it was easy to compare them with the copies displayed at polling centres and given to party agents and party officials,” the report concluded.

The INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakub in the foreword of the report stated, “This report documents the major activities the Commission carried out in the preparation and conduct of the General Election, beginning from mid-2019.

“This early preparation was in keeping with what has become the Commission’s practice of long-range systematic planning
and execution of the country’s elections since 2010.”
PUNCH

Headline

FULL LIST: US To Review Green Cards From 19 ‘Countries Of Concern’ After Washington Shooting

Published

7 hours ago

November 29, 2025

Editor

The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it will review the immigration status of all permanent residents, or “Green Card” holders, from Afghanistan and 18 other countries following the attack on National Guard troops in Washington, D.C.

U.S. officials identified the suspect in Wednesday’s shooting as a 29-year-old Afghan national who previously worked alongside American forces in Afghanistan.

The individual was granted asylum earlier this year, not permanent residency, according to AfghanEvac, an organisation that assists Afghans resettled in the United States after the Taliban takeover in 2021.

“I have directed a full-scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern,” said Joseph Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), on X.

The review follows a June executive order from President Trump classifying 19 countries as “of Identified Concern.”

The order banned entry for nearly all nationals from 12 countries, including Afghanistan. The full list of these countries is:

Afghanistan

Myanmar

Chad

Congo-Brazzaville

Equatorial Guinea

Eritrea

Haiti

Iran

Libya

Somalia

Sudan

Yemen

A partial travel ban applies to seven additional countries, though some temporary work visas remain allowed: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

Headline

Romanian Defence Minister Quits After Admitting Error In Academic Record

Published

8 hours ago

November 29, 2025

Editor

Romania’s defence minister resigned on Friday after saying he made a “mistake” on his CV about his university education, as controversy swirled over alleged lies on his resume.

Ionut Mosteanu – who has admitted to writing on his CV that he graduated from a university he never attended – said he did not want the row “to distract” the NATO member at a time when it and Europe are “under attack from Russia”.

Romania has repeatedly seen drone fragments fall on its soil since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and reported a number of drone incursions.

On Tuesday, a drone crashed in eastern Romania, which borders Ukraine.

Romania has also accused Moscow of “hybrid attacks”, including meddling in presidential elections last year that were subsequently annulled.

“Today, I resigned from my position as minister of national defence,” Mosteanu said in a Facebook post, adding he wanted the country to be focused on its “difficult mission”.

“Romania and Europe are under attack from Russia. Our national security must be defended at all costs,” he added.

Mosteanu had come under pressure after a media investigation published on Thursday revealed that he wrote in a CV that he graduated from a university which he did not actually attend.

That same day he apologised for what he called “a mistake”.

“In a CV I quickly put together in 2016 using a template I found online, there is a mistake that I admit embarrasses me. I didn’t pay much attention to these details at the time,” he said on Facebook.

Mosteanu was appointed defence minister in June of this year, when a new pro-European government was formed after months of political turmoil.

Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said in a press release that he would propose economy and tourism minister Radu Miruta take over the defence portfolio in the interim.

AFP

Headline

Russia Insists Ukraine Must Cede Land Or Face Continued Military Push

Published

2 days ago

November 27, 2025

Editor

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that he would end his Ukraine offensive if Kyiv withdrew from territory Moscow claims at its own — otherwise his army would take it by force.

The Russian army has been slowly but steadily grinding through eastern Ukraine in costly battles against outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces.

Washington has meanwhile renewed its push to end the nearly four-year war, putting forward a surprise plan that it hopes to finalise through upcoming talks with Moscow and Kyiv.

“If Ukrainian forces leave the territories they hold, then we will stop combat operations,” Putin said during a visit to Kyrgyzstan. “If they don’t, then we will achieve it by military means.”

Russia controls around one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory. The issue of occupied land, which Kyiv has said it will never cede, is among the biggest stumbling blocks in the peace process.

Another important issue in the talks are Western security guarantees for Ukraine, which Kyiv says are needed to prevent Moscow from invading again in the future.

Washington’s original plan — drafted without input from Ukraine’s European allies — would have seen Kyiv withdraw from its eastern Donetsk region and the United States de facto recognise the Donetsk, Crimea and Lugansk regions as Russian.

The US pared back the original plan over the weekend following criticism from Kyiv and Europe, but has not yet released the new version.

Putin, who has seen the new plan, said it could be a negotiation starter.

“Overall, we agree that it could form the basis for future agreements,” he said of the latest draft, which the US is thought to have shortened to about 20 points.

US negotiator Steve Witkoff was expected in Moscow next week to discuss the revised document, Putin said.

US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is meanwhile due to visit Kyiv later this week, Ukraine’s top presidential aide Andriy Yermak said.

– ‘Little can be done’ –

In his remarks Thursday, Putin repeated the claim that Russia had encircled the Ukrainian army in Pokrovsk and Myrnograd in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region — the most fiercely embattled area and a key target for Moscow’s forces.

“Krasnoarmeysk and Dimitrov are completely surrounded,” he said, using the Russian names for the cities.

Moscow was also advancing in Vovchansk and Siversk, as well as approaching the important logistic hub of Guliaipole, he added.

The Russian offensive “is practically impossible to hold back, so there is little that can be done about it”, Putin said.

Ukraine has denied Pokrovsk and Myrnograd are encircled, insisting its forces continue to hold the enemy along the front line.

Putin also questioned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy and said signing any agreement with him would be legally “almost impossible” at the moment, a suggestion that has drawn groans from Kyiv and its allies.

According to data analysed by AFP from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russian forces have conquered an average of 467 square kilometres (180 square miles) each month in 2025 — a step up from 2024.

Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, triggering the worst armed conflict in Europe since World War II.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced millions to flee their homes.