INEC Must Improve on Votes Collation – CSOs

Fri, Oct 14, 2016
By publisher
2 MIN READ

Political Briefs

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THE Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room has said that for the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to conduct credible elections, it must improve on the processes of votes’ collation. It said that collation of votes was a major weak link of the recent conducted Edo State Governorship elections.

It noted that the votes collation marred the credibility of what it observed was a well-organised election. In its interim report on the Edo governorship polls, the Situation Room said the gaps and challenges with collation of results certainly raised issues of transparency and integrity of the ballot and elections.

The report said INEC must resolve the problems of votes’ collation if elections in Nigeria were to be accepted as credible. “While the process and conduct of the elections went smoothly, a major weak link in the conduct of elections in Nigeria again manifested – the collation of results – and this raised questions over the transparency of this particular process in the election.

“There is an important need for revitalisation of the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security to ensure synergy and delivery on results by the agencies. The deployment of security personnel also needs to be better handled. Most of the security personnel deployed for the elections complained of not being paid their allowances leading to their personally paying their way to attend to the important national duty of elections. This situation is not good enough and should be avoided so that security personnel do not become even more prone to inducement by political interests.”

—  Oct 24, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT

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