Should the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) publish any results that do not agree with what actually was recorded at the polling units as is already feared, some international organisations may release their versions from the polling units.
One of such organisations may be Yiaga Africa, indicated as a non-profit civic hub of change makers committed to the promotion of democratic governance, human rights and civic engagement.
Yiaga Africa, in a statement Sunday afternoon (February 26, 2023), made available to BusinessDay, said it has results from 1,507 polling units around Nigeria but that it would allow INEC, the statutory authority, to release its own result first.
The statement signed by Hussaini Abdu and Samson Itodo, said it deployed 3,836 observers across the country including 3014 parallel vote tabulation (PVT) observers in 1507 polling stations.
Yiaga said: “This methodology enabled Yiaga Africa to independently assess the quality of the process and verify the accuracy of the official presidential election results announced by INEC.
“At this time, Yiaga Africa is able to provide preliminary statistically accurate data on the conduct of the election as of 25 February 2023 – from the opening of polling units through accreditation, voting and counting until the posting of results – in addition, we have independent projections of the vote shares that each candidate should receive based on the ballots cast at polling units.”
The oganisation said if INEC’s results fall within Yiaga Africa’s estimated ranges, then the public, political parties and candidates should have confidence the official results reflect the ballots cast at the polling units.
However, it warned, “If the official results are manipulated at any point in the process, we will be able to expose it.”
It said as soon as INEC announces the official results, Yiaga Africa would convene a press conference to share its own statement on the accuracy of the election results and will publicize these projections.
The report pointed at significant logistics challenges which delayed opening of polls across the country.
“Once again INEC has fallen short of expectations. As a result, elections didn’t hold in some polling units due to INEC’s inability to deploy, insecurity, disruption or malfunctioned BVAS. Yiaga Africa notes that in 18 sampled polling units elections were not conducted. Yiaga Africa also received reports from two polling units in Kano and Delta states where voting was suspended and INEC indicated the process will continue on Sunday, 26th February. Yiaga Africa has redeployed observers and they are currently at these polling units waiting on the polling officials to hold the elections.”
The group expressed concerns about the unexplained delay in uploading polling unit results for the presidential election on the INEC Election Results Viewing Portal (IReV).
“As of 10 pm on election day, results for the Presidential election were not uploaded on the INEC portal after voting and counting ended in several polling units. At 9:00 am on 26th February, INEC uploaded only 25,503 results for the Presidential elections on the INEC portal. The delay in uploading the results undermines public confidence in the results transmission process as it deviates from the guidelines for the elections and it failed to meet citizens expectations.”
Giving preliminary assessments, Yiaga said the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) had issue in only in nine per cent of the units they monitored and that INEC officials were unprofessional and partisan in nine per cent of monitored units.
The statement said 13 per cent of voting was not in secrecy and that voters faced intimidation in five per cent of places monitored.
“During counting All Progressives Congress (APC) party agents were sighted at 97 per cent of polling units, Labour Party (LP) polling agents were sighted at 67 per cent of polling units, New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) polling agents were sighted at 51% of polling units, and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at 99 per cent of polling units.”
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