Politics
By Anthony Isibor
YIAGA Africa has described the Saturday, February 25 presidential election as another missed opportunity for the country.
In a statement signed by Samson Itodo, Chair, Executive Director Yiaga Africa and Aisha Abdullahi, Watching The Vote Yiaga Africa on Wednesday, March 1, 2023, Yiaga Africa noted that it came to the conclusion after it employed the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology and deployed 3,014 observers in pairs to a representative random sample of 1,507 polling units, 822 mobile observers to cover the election in all 774 local government areas (LGAs), in the 36 states and the FCT.
It said that its deployment strategy enabled it to provide timely and accurate information on the election day process commencing from the set-up, voter accreditation, voting, and counting and to independently assess the official results of the presidential election as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Yiaga Africa observers reported that INEC failed to redeploy and conduct elections in 13 (less than 1%) of sampled polling units. These polling units were distributed across Adamawa, Taraba, Jigawa, Katsina, Anambra, Imo, Cross River, and Delta states.
According to the statement, the election day process was fraught with widespread logistical challenges resulting in the late arrival of polling officials and late opening of polling units across the country particularly in South East and South-South geopolitical zones. Voting was extended to the late hours in some polling units affected by logistical hiccups. Due to logistical challenges, some polling units failed to open on election day.
“INEC’s inability to conduct elections in those polling units denied voters the opportunity to exercise their right to vote. The creation of additional polling units was a positive and long-needed step by INEC. However, the implementation failed to address overcrowding. As a result, there were polling units with fewer than 10 registered voters and others with over 10,000. Some voters who were migrated to new polling units experienced difficulties locating their respective polling units. In the course of the election, Yiaga Africa expressed concerns about the delay in uploading polling unit results for the presidential election on the INEC Election Results Viewing Portal (IReV).
“As of today, only 73% of the polling unit-level results have been uploaded. Undoubtedly, the delay in uploading the polling unit-level results cast doubts on the credibility of the results management process resulting in broken public trust in electoral technology. Yiaga Africa notes that the delayed upload of the results on the IReV is a flagrant disregard of INEC’s Regulations and Guidelines, and it failed to meet citizens’ expectations.
“Once again, the 2023 Presidential and National Assembly elections were a missed opportunity. Factors like serious logistical and technological shortcomings, non-compliance with electoral guidelines, lack of transparency, and manipulation of election results undermine public confidence in INEC and the overall outcome of the elections.” it said.
It, however, commended the voters who waited patiently to vote late into the night and to watch the counting of the ballots in the early hours of the morning.
A.I
