Ekiti Election: Election Observers Raise Concerns About Police Overzealousness

 

A group of election observers, YIAGA AFRICA, has expressed concerns with the overzealous and hostile conduct of security personnel deployed to Ekiti state for Saturday governorship election.

 

The Executive Director, YIAGA AFRICA , Samson Itodo, therefore, called on security agencies “to uphold the principles of non-partisanship, transparency, civil policing and professionalism in the conduct of the affairs”.

 

Itodo said his group is employing parallel vote tabulation (PVT) methodology to provide timely and accurate information on the conduct, accreditation, voting and counting in Saturday’s governorship election in Ekiti State.

 

He said the PVT, which he described as “gold standard for citizenship observation” of election, would also enhance its independent verification of the official results of the election as announced by the Independent national Electoral Commission (INEC).

 

Itodo, who spoke at a pre-election press conference in Ado Ekiti, urged Ekiti people to redirect attention to issues in the election and refrain from listening to rumour and hate campaigns capable of undermining citizen confidence in the integrity of elections.

 

He urged INEC to “respect the results counting and announcement procedures including the posting of Form EC 60E even with the introduction of new electronic collation technologies’.

 

The observers expressed concerns with the overzealous and hostile conduct of security personnel deployed to the state for the state for the election, calling on security agencies “to uphold the principles of non-partisanship, transparency, civil policing and professionalism in the conduct of the affairs”.

 

According to Itodo, YIAGA, though its Watching the Vote (WTV) Project, will, on Saturday, deploy 500 stationary observers to a representative statistical sample of 250 polling units and 25 mobile observers located in all 16 local government areas (LGAs) of Ekiti State” in addition to deployment of 16 collation centre observers to each of the council area collation centres.

 

He said that YIAGA Africa had been involved in election observation in Nigeria since 2007, promoting democracy, constitutionalism and youth participation in Africa, and achieving its goal through research, capacity development and policy advocacy.