Explainer: Election results collation chain that decides Nigeria’s president

By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA – Nigeria’s president is not declared on the strength of a single national count. A chain of collation officers, each signing for the votes below them, builds the result from the polling unit up to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
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The chain starts when voting ends. Voters are accredited with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, and the presiding officer counts the ballots in public and enters each party’s score on Form EC8A, the polling unit result sheet.
The presiding office...