Yiaga Africa, a group of electoral observers, has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to improve its process of conducting elections in the country.
The Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, Mr. Samson Itodo, made the call at the post election of the group.
press conference in Abuja on the sidelines of the just concluded Federal Capital Territory (FCT) area council election.
Itodo said Yiaga Africa deployed trained and accredited citizen observers under its Watching The Vote (WTV) initiative to monitor the election.
He said the findings revealed the election was characterized by electoral security challenges and abysmal voter turnout.
“As noted in our noon status statement, the FCT Area Council election was riddled with shortcomings and infractions.
“This includes the late deployment of election materials, poor distribution of assistance materials for people with disabilities, and unequal allocation of voters to voting units, and malfunctioning of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation system (BVAS).
“Yiaga Africa sees these challenges as a setback in the quality of election day administration,” he said.
Itodo added: “Yiaga Africa had also forecast low voter turnout in the elections, and this manifested itself in visited units, especially in the Abuja Municipal Area Council Centre.
He said Yiaga Africa WTV’s findings showed a late deployment of election materials and a delay in the start of voting in most areas.
He added that although BVAS was implemented in all voting units, technological flaws in its use were observed.
with challenges including misconfiguration and lack of voter accreditation.
He added that there were also delays in the technicians’ response to BVAS complaints in some voting units, as well as delays in voter authentication within the processing time.
“Yiaga Africa observed that in some voting units with more than 1,000 registered voters, INEC deployed only one BVAS, indicating an inconsistency in the guidelines for BVAS deployment,” he said.
Itodo said the group noted delays in uploading election results to the INEC platform.
of voters as a result of the lack of names on the voter register displayed in the voting units.
Itodo said the group also discovered the UN even the distribution of voters to the new voting units and noted an imbalance in the distribution of voters.
He said the imbalance created challenges with managing voting units with more than 1,000 registered voters.
He said that while some voting units had as many as 2,500 registered voters, others had fewer than 5 voters in the same location.
Itodo said Yiaga Africa observers witnessed a vote-buying incident at some voting units and security officials deployed to the voting unit were complicit as people were seen collecting parcels of N1000 bills.
He said the group also noted inadequate ballots and the display of incorrect ballots, as some locations indicated that the number of ballots displayed was less than the number of registered voters.
He urged President Muhammadu Buhari to sanction the Electoral Law Project (Amendment) 2022 without further delay.
He urged INEC to carry out an audit of the BVAS and ensure all technical brilliance The problems with the device were resolved before the elections of Ekiti and Osun 2022 out-of-cycle Governor disenfranchisement of voters in subsequent elections, INEC must sync all voter registration information with newly created voting units in its online and offline databases .
He called for timely uploading of voting unit results to INEC’s online portal to increase public confidence in declared election results and maintain the highest level of transparency in the collection of results.
Itodo called on the political parties and the contenders to show maturity and respect for the rules and guidelines established for holding the elections.
He congratulated the electorate and the security agencies for the peaceful conduct of the elections and applauded the voters for their resilience and determination to vote in sa despite logistical challenges.
The founder of the Albino Foundation, Mr. Jake Epelle, denounced the unavailability of magnifying glasses and braille for PWDs, adding that only one magnifying glass was seen and most of the ad hoc staff did not know what it was for.
Epelle said the group also noted that many of the Voting Units were set up and mounted on a dais, making it difficult for blind people and people with disabilities to access accreditation and voting points.
he said this went against INEC’s guarantees to provide braille, magnifying glasses and make voting units accessible to people with disabilities.
He expressed his strong belief that there was still room for improvement in the area of including people with disabilities in the process since the poll was a litmus test for the 2023 general election.
