Hours after voting was concluded in the Ondo State Governorship election, and collation commenced, 75% of the results have been uploaded to the INEC portal.

National Commissioner, Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Anthonia Simbine, disclosed this in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Saturday.

“Right now, Polling Unit results have been uploaded and we have about 75% of those unit results uploaded on the INEC results viewing portal,” Simbine said.

She, however, said she can’t predict when the final results would come out as the state is very large.

“I don’t think we can say for definite now. You know that Ondo State is quite large with varying types of terrain, including going over the seas and all the results have to come in before we can really say”.

The results that have come in so far, according to the INEC official, are from 2,200 Polling Units.

Speaking further, Simbine clarified the process of uploading the results, saying the ‘Z Pad’ was not fully utilised but it was only used to upload the results.

“The Z Pad was to be used for two functions,” the Resident Electoral Commissioner in Edo State, Johnson Alalibo, had explained during the Edo governorship election last month, “one of which was to do double authentication of the accreditation process.”

“It was test run in the state constituency election in Nasarawa State but there were some hitches and we have been advised to test run those hitches before we run it again for this major state governorship election”.

If implemented, the Z Pad, according to Alalibo would have allowed Nigerians view the results “on time, and real-time”.

Simbine, however, noted that the process was neither used for the Ondo nor the Edo election until the challenges from the test run have been rectified.

Key candidates in the race which involved 17 political parties, are the candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Eyitayo Jegede who is hoping to secure a victory after losing out in 2016; the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) and deputy governor of the state, Ajayi Agboola, who is running against his principal, Rotimi Akeredolu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who is also seeking to secure a second term. (Channels TV)

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