Yiaga Africa Watching the Vote has observed that the delayed upload of the results on the IReV was a flagrant disregard of INEC’s regulations and guidelines, which failed to meet citizens’ expectations.
Yiaga Africa also condemned the cases of violence and disruption of the voting and results’ collation process by thugs and hoodlums, especially the violence targeted at National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) members and INEC staff.
The Board Chair, Dr. Aisha Abdullahi, and Executive Director, Yiaga Africa Samson Itodo, while briefing newsmen in Abuja observed that the INEC’s inability to conduct elections in 13 polling units in Adamawa, Taraba, Jigawa, Katsina, Anambra, Imo, Cross River, and Delta states distrupted and denied voters the opportunity to exercise their rights to vote.
They said due to logistical challenges, some polling units failed to open on election day.
Yiaga Africa redeployed observers to 20 of its 1,507 sampled polling units affected by logistical hiccups on Saturday, February 25, 2023.
They said observers reported that INEC failed to redeploy and conduct elections in 13 (less than 1%) of sampled polling units.
They said the creation of additional polling units was a positive and long-needed step by INEC.
“However, the implementation failed to address overcrowding.
“As a result, there were polling units with fewer than 10 registered voters and others with over 10,000. Some voters who were migrated to new polling units experienced difficulties locating their respective polling units.
“In the course of the election, Yiaga Africa expressed concerns about the delay in uploading polling unit results for the presidential election on the INEC Election Results Viewing Portal (IReV). As of today, only 73% of the polling unit-level results have been uploaded.
“Undoubtedly, the delay in uploading the polling unit-level results cast doubts on the credibility of the results management process resulting in broken public trust in electoral technology,” they said.
They recommended a comprehensive audit and investigation to unravel the factors that led to the delay in the upload of election results on the online portal.
They said INEC should clarify the inconsistencies in some of the results, especially that of presidential election from Rivers and Imo states.
