The Centre for Democracy and Development on Saturday scored the Independent National Electoral Commission high in the conduct of the Ekiti State governorship election.
This was part of the preliminary report of the CDD on the election, which was presented to newsmen on Saturday.
Prof. Shola Omotola, Member, Centre for Democracy and Development Election Analysis Centre and Professor of Political Science, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, made this known in CDD’s second preliminary statement in Abuja.
Presenting the preliminary report to newsmen, Omotola said that the conduct of the election by INEC was a significant improvement on previous elections.
He said that the general atmosphere of the elections was peaceful and INEC officials arrived early for the conduct of the election.
He said: “CDD-EAC observer reports showed that by 8:30am, 64 per cent of polling units visited had opened, and between 8:30am and 9:30am, another 29 per cent had opened.
“The data indicate that 93 per cent of the Polling Units in the areas observed had started voting by 9:30am.
“The CDD-EAC data point to a high usage of the BVAS, with 88 per cent of polling units visited reporting effective usage.
“Although there were hitches in very few locations, where our observers noted that some voters could not be accredited, the CDD-EAC observers rated the efficiency of the BVAS as either very good or excellent.”
Omotola added that in the 31 reported cases where the BVAS malfunctioned, 71 per cent of those cases were resolved within an hour.
He said: “On the average therefore, CDD-EAC data indicated that it took around 2.4 minutes for voters to be processed through the BVAS.
“In 45 per cent of the cases, voters were accredited in two minutes or less, while in 87 per cent of the cases each voter was accredited within four minutes.”
Omotola said that the CDD-EAC observers reported a worrisome situation in which some voters were allowed to cast their ballot without being authenticated by the BVAS.
He said that the group also observed that INEC tried to provide assistive materials like braille, magnifying glasses for Persons With Disabilities.
He said that 24.2 per cent of some polling units were not accessible to voters with disabilities, while only 24.1 per cent of polling units visited made provision for visually impaired voters by providing braille ballot guides and magnifying glasses.
Omotola said that CDD-EAC observers documented 41 instances of vote buying and selling at Polling Units.
He said that one of the observable patterns of vote buying was the collection of cash in brown envelopes, which was apparently meant to disguise the content of the envelopes in order to avoid arrest by the anti-corruption agencies.
He, however, said that CDD-EAC commended the arrest of some political actors who were alleged to be involved in vote buying in the course of the election.
Omotola said that the CDD-EAC Fake News Hub tracked and fact-checked a number of fake news and misinformation trending on Election Day.
He said: “A major trending item was the purported withdrawal letter of the SDP candidate, Segun Oni, and his endorsement of the PDP candidate, which circulated across social media.
“Another claim on Twitter was that 9 million voters were expected to vote in the Ekiti 2022 gubernatorial election.
“This claim was checked by CDD-EAC fact checkers, who returned a verdict of “false” for the claim as there are 988,923 voters registered by INEC for the Ekiti Governorship election.”
Omotola said that another fake news was tracked relating to claims that in Ido/Osi, soldiers were preventing voters from going to their polling units, which was verified to be false.
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