How Your Vote Travels: From Your Polling Unit to the National Result

There is no single national count in a Nigerian presidential election. The national result is built entirely from polling-unit results — 176,595 of them — added together level by level.

It starts where you vote. After polls close, ballots are sorted and counted aloud at the unit, in front of voters and party agents. The result is recorded on Form EC8A, signed by the presiding officer and the agents present, and pasted at the unit for anyone to see. The BVAS then uploads that sheet to INEC's Result Viewing Portal (IReV) — an electronic transmission the Electoral Act 2026 now makes mandatory.

From there, unit results are collated at the ward onto Form EC8B, at the local government onto Form EC8C, at the state onto Form EC8D, and finally nationally onto Form EC8E, after which the INEC Chairman — the Chief Returning Officer — declares the result.

This is why staying for the count matters. Voters who watch their unit's count, and later compare the EC8A on IReV with what was collated, are part of what keeps the process honest.