By Roundoffnews
Yiaga Africa has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC for its preparedness so far ahead of the Saturday’s governorship election.
However the group noted some areas of observations which the commission is required to address to as to ensure a credible exercise.
Addressing a news conference in Ado Ekiti, Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo acknowledged the efforts by INEC to improve voter access to polling units by creating an additional 250 polling units in Ekiti State.
He however expressed concerned about the imbalance in the distribution of voters to polling units as INEC is yet to address concerns about oversized polling units.
Samson Itodo said: “Based on INEC’s final list of polling units there are 75 polling units with over 1000 registered voters, 11 with over 2000 voters and 1 polling unit with 3,429 registered voters.
“Yiaga Africa is also concerned about the lack of adequate public information on the new polling unit’s location and the distribution of voters to these polling units.
Itodo equally commended the decision to deploy the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) which he said would no doubt improve the quality and transparency of elections.
“Yiaga Africa hopes that the capacity gaps and technology challenges highlighted in our report on the Federal Capital Territory Council elections in February 2022 have been addressed, to ensure that eligible voters are able to vote on election day.
“Data for collection rate of Permanent Voters Cards in determining the margin of lead in the election: As enshrined in the INEC guidelines, the conclusiveness of the election will be determined by a comparison of the total number of voters who collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and margin of lead between the first two candidates.
To safeguard the transparency of election results, it is imperative for INEC to publish the disaggregated data of the number of PVCs collected per polling unit.
“While INEC has revealed that 76% of PVCs have been collected in Ekiti State, the collection will end on June 16, 2022. As soon as the PVC collection is suspended, Yiaga Africa urges INEC to provide updated figures of PVCs collected before election day and make this information available on its website.
The Executive Director also applauded the decision of INEC to refrain from storing sensitive materials at the Central Bank of Nigeria due to allegations of partisanship levelled against the Governor of the CBN but requested that Key stakeholders and the public be adequately informed of INEC’s new strategy for the deployment of sensitive materials.
“Additionally, the security agencies should support the quest for credible and peaceful polls by providing adequate security to INEC to guarantee the safety of sensitive materials and timely deployment to the polling units.
Other members of the group who spoke said technology would be deployed to ensure monitoring and verification of the exercise.
They appealed to all actors to play by the rules and shun vote trading saying it would undermine the credibility of the exercise.