Edo poll: Yiaga Africa trains over 500 persons on essentials of election observation

A non-governmental organisation, Yiaga Africa, has trained a total of 543 persons on the guidelines and principles of election observation ahead of the September 19 governorship election in Edo State.

Samson Itodo, executive director, Yiaga Africa, in a statement, said the observers were also trained on how to track and report adherence to the coronavirus (COVID-19) prevention protocols at the polling units and local government areas results collation centres.

The training tagged “Election day observation training” was held September 10-13, 2020 in 42 training centres spread across all LGAs in the state.

Giving the breakdown of the observers, Itodo said 500 polling unit observers, 24 roving observers, 18 collation centre observers, and one state focal person were trained to observe, document and report the process of the election.

“The Watching The Vote (WTV) has deployed its cohort of 44 Master Trainers across all 18 Local Government Areas in Edo state for the training of over 500 polling unit observers.

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“Yiaga Africa’s Watching The Vote (WTV) will employ the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology on election day and will deploy 500 stationary observers in pairs to a representative statistical sample of 250 polling units and 24 mobile observers, 18 Collation Center observers in each of the 18 LGAs of Edo State and one State Focal Point (SFP).

“The deployment strategy will enable Yiaga Africa to provide timely and precise information on the conduct of accreditation, voting and counting as well as to independently verify the official results for the gubernatorial election as announced by INEC,” Itodo said.

He explained that the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) is an observation methodology leverages statistics and technology for the observation of the process of voting, counting and tallying of results.

“With the results assembled from the sampled polling units, a citizen observer group can release projected estimates and verify the accuracy of results declared by the election management body.

“Using this methodology, observer reports are sent through SMS to a central database which enables WTV to analyse and share timely findings on the conduct of the election in near real-time,” he said.