Nigerians missed opportunity to improve on 2015 polls – Observer group

Nigeria’s largest non-partisan and independent movement of citizen observers, YIAGA AFRICA’ Watching The Vote (WTV) has  said the conduct of Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections fell short of expectations.

Presenting its preliminary findings on the conduct of the election at a press conference in Abuja, on Sunday, the organisation insisted that the election was characterised by many of the same shortcomings that marred previous national elections in Nigeria.

The organisation which presented a prepared text jointly signed by its Chairman, Dr Hussaini Abdu and the Executive Director, Samson Itodo, said: “INEC’s logistical challenges resulted in late opening of 59 per cent of polling units that, together with instances of misconduct by political parties in some polling units, compromised the ability of some citizens to vote and undermine the overall credibility of the process.”

To this end, it noted: “Nigeria missed an opportunity to improve the quality of its elections. These were not the elections Nigerians wanted; they were not the elections Nigerians expected; and, most importantly, they were not the elections Nigerians deserve. Our commission must improve its capacity to deliver credible elections and our political parties must play according to the rules.’’

Failure to do so could fundamentally threaten our democracy, said the Chairman of the WTV Working Group, Dr. Hussain Abdu.

The text read in part: “Despite the delay, YIAGA AFRICA noted that INEC continued to experience significant logistical challenges on February 23 that resulted in late opening of polling units.

“YIAGA AFRICA’s Watching The Vote findings showed that polling units opened late throughout the country with only 41 per cent of polling units open as at 10:30am and with units in the South-South opening later than polling units other geopolitical zones.

“Once polling units opened, most polling units had essential election materials. Smart Card Readers were present in 99 per cent of polling units and were largely used throughout accreditation and voting.

“However,  YIAGA AFRICA is concerned by tally sheet data gathered from its observers indicating that nearly half of voters may have voted with the Smart Card Readers authenticating only their Permanent Voters Card and not their fingerprints.

“YIAGA AFRICA also notes that counting procedures were rigorously adhered to in all polling units, and registers with particular concern that results were not publicly posted at the polling units in 19 per cent of polling units.”

It further explained:”YIAGA AFRICA employed the parallel vote tabulation (PVT) methodology-the gold standard for citizen observation.” WTV deployed 3,030 observers to a representative statistical sample of 1,515 polling units, 46 observers to 23 voting points, and 822 mobile observers located in all 774 LGAs.