FCT Polls: Yiaga Africa identifies electoral flaws, calls for INEC Improvement
NEWS DIGEST – Election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa in its preliminary reports for the recently concluded FCT Council elections has identified late commencement of polls, poor functionality of the BVAS machines, communication glitches among other operational deficiencies as a major gap in the local polls.
This was made known on Monday in a statement co-signed by the Executive Director Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, and Board Member, Barrister Ezenwa Nwagwu.
According to the statement, Yiaga Africa highlighted issues of poor logistics and lateness in the commencement of polls in several polling stations.
“Polling officials encountered difficulty in locating assigned polling units. The logistics hiccups were exacerbated with the late arrival of police officers at the Registration Area Centers. For instance, several polling units in Abuja Municipal Area Council especially Gwarinpa and Orozo ward opened late as polling officials couldn’t deploy without security protection. On average, accreditation and voting commenced at 10:00 am in most polling units observed”, the statement reads.
Yiaga Africa said there were technical glitches with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ranging from the wrong configuration of BVAS in respective polling units.
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The electoral findings also revealed that the BVAS machine failed to accredit voters, as there were delays in RATECHs response to BVAS complaints in some polling units as well as delays in authenticating voters within processing time.
The report further highlighted issues of voter disenfranchisement, violation of electoral guidelines, and inconsistent communication on election security.
“In the centres where the disenfranchisement occurred, the voters were holders of valid Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) assigned to those polling units. For such voters, INEC’s online voter verification portal also verified their registration status.
“Upon further investigation by Yiaga Africa, we discovered that INEC allocated voters to new polling units without informing voters of the changes to their polling units. This created confusion and prevented some voters from casting their ballot”.
Yiaga Africa in its recommendation urged President Muhammadu Buhari to assent to the 2022 Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill and also charged INEC to undertake timely and proactive steps towards upcoming elections in other to avoid reoccurring challenges.
“INEC should urgently undertake an audit of the BVAS and ensure all the technological glitches with the devices are resolved, ahead of Ekiti and Osun 2022 off-cycle gubernatorial elections to prevent possible disenfranchisement of voters, but also inspire public confidence in electoral technologies being deployed INEC for elections”, the statement reads.
