Yiaga Africa, a Civil Society Organization (CSO), has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to be transparent in conducting the election of the FCT Councils.
The CSO also asked INEC to guarantee the early start of the exercise scheduled for Saturday.
Yiaga Africa board member Mr. Ezenwa Nwagwu made the call at the organisation’s pre-election press conference and community outreach for the FCT area council elections on Friday in Kuje.
Nwagwa said that Yiaga Africa was also asking INEC to publish the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) rate as it had initially promised before the elections.
He said that INEC officials must ensure uniformity and consistency in the application of the guidelines in all polling stations, as well as provide explicit information on the accreditation and voting procedure, the process of collecting results and the announcement.
The board member also advised INEC to ensure that its Results Portal was up and running, to enable the upload of results at the voting unit level on election day, so that citizens could keep track of the results. of your votes.
Nwagwu said that advice to INEC had become imperative due to the administration and management of local government, as the third level of government in Nigeria had consistently fallen below the expected standards of democratic leadership.
“For a level of government set up to be closest to the people, it is, however, a level of government that is largely inaccessible to the people themselves and does not provide them with democratic governance.
“While the nation awaits the amendment of the constitution to guarantee the autonomy of local governments, regular elections at that level present an opportunity to entrench democracy in them,” he said.
Nwagwu said that Yiaga Africa looked at the pre-election environment and noted that there were poor voter education campaigns in political parties.
He added that Yiaga feared the possibility of low voter turnout at the council polls, due to little or no campaign participating in the election and low voter turnout and publicity.
“Yiaga Africa hopes that the capacity gaps and technology challenges experienced during the 2021 Anambra Governorate election will be addressed with the deployment of the BVAS.”
She lamented that there were only three presidential candidates and eight vice-presidential candidates, while there were 39 councilor candidates, indicating the likelihood of underrepresentation of women.
He urged security agencies to work with the commission to secure election materials, staff and citizens.
Mr. Samson Itodo, Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, asked voters to make sure they cast their ballots and adhere to the electoral guidelines.
Itodo said the group would observe the election to ensure that the rules were followed.
Dr. Aisha Akanbi, Leader of the National Good Governance Committee on Gender Issues, which also represents the National Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations of Nigeria (FOMWAN), urged women to participate in the elections to vote.
The Nigerian News Agency reports that 2,822 Biometric Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) are expected to participate in the elections and 1,373,492 registered voters in the elections for president and councilor positions in the 2,229 voting units.
