Yiaga Africa Urge INEC to Avoid Pitfalls of Presidential Election

Chuks Okocha in Abuja

Yiaga Africa, a pro election, civil society group has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ensure that the shortcomings observed in previous Presidential and National Assembly elections were properly addressed ahead of the Governorship elections.

Addressing a press. Conference in Abuja, yesterday, Ezenwa Nwagwu For Chair, Watching The Vote Working Group Yiaga Africa and Cynthia Mbamalu Director of Programs Yiaga Africa said, “INEC should ensure proper and consistent communication with the transport union and companies providing logistics support to ensure early Election Day deployment.

“This also includes the need to ensure that only trained ad-hoc officials are deployed on Election Day. Contingency plans should be put in place in situations where transport unions /companies withdraw or default in their contractual obligation to deploy election materials and personnel”

According to the Yiaga chieftains, “INEC Should ensure proper and timely communication with stakeholders on the election day process, challenges experienced and immediate plans to address those challenges to inspire citizens’ confidence in the process.”

Yiaga Africa called on the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Elections Security (ICCES) to ensure that security personnel deployed complies with the code of conduct on election security.

According to Yiaga, “This includes professionalism in their conduct, arrest of electoral offenders and respect for the rights of citizens, media, and observers, including the right to freedom of movement on Election Day for duly accredited observers and media practitioners.”

Yiaga Africa called on Political parties, candidates and their supporters to commit to peaceful campaigns ahead of the election and on Election Day and refrain from vote-buying and compromising the secrecy of the ballot.

It urged voters to resist efforts to purchase their votes, to turn out in their numbers and vote according to their preferences on Saturday, March 18.

The group said that it would deploy a total of 1,547 duly trained and accredited stationary and roving observers to observe the conduct of the Governorship election in 28 states.

Yiaga Africa also said that it will be deploying the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology to observe the governorship elections in Benue, Delta and Kano states.

This, it said will involve deploying 900 stationary observers to a representative randomly selected sample of 300 polling units for each of the states,

Yiaga Africa further said that it will also be deploying 97 roving observers in the three states.

Additionally, Yiaga Africa said that it “will deploy 517 stationary observers and 33 roving observers in the other 25 days where the governorship elections will be held, to observe and report on the entire election day process from setup of the polling units, accreditation, voting, announcement and posting of the official results and will send in periodic reports to the Watching the Vote National Data Centre.

“At the end of polls, Yiaga Africa observer will deploy to all LGAs and State’s results collation centres to observe and report the results collation process. This deployment will enable Yiaga Africa to provide the most timely and accurate information on the governorship elections in the states.

“Using the PVT, Yiaga Africa will also provide an independent projection of voter turnout in Benue, Delta and Kano States, and will be able to project the vote shares that each party should receive within a narrow-estimated range. If the official results fall within Yiaga Africa’s estimated ranges, then the public, political parties and candidates should have confidence in the ballots cast at the polling units.

“Only INEC, however, has the legal mandate to announce the election results. As soon as INEC announces the official results, Yiaga Africa will follow up with a result verification press conference to share its statement on the accuracy of the election results”, Yiaga stated.