Prof. Yakubu acknowledged the challenging circumstances under which the officers operated, manually completing designated forms as required by law. He emphasised the importance of their commitment to democracy while expressing INEC's willingness to address concerns raised by Nigerians regarding result management.
The chairman identified specific areas of focus for discussion, including recruitment, training, and posting of collation and returning officers, logistics, the integrity of the collation process, the role of technology, security, the conduct of party agents, and election observers during collation, and the conduct of security personnel.
The meeting involved 37 state collation officers for the presidential election (SCOPEs) and senatorial district collation officers, who also served as returning officers for the governorship and senatorial elections, respectively.
Prof. Kabir Bala, the Vice Chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, who was the State Returning Officer for Sokoto State, believed that the review would lead to improvements in future elections. He stressed the importance of addressing hiccups that occurred during the polls and called for a change in attitude among politicians and electorates to foster better elections in Nigeria.