Anambra guber election not ‘free and fair’ – Ohanele

By Chidiebere Iwuoha

Owerri

Director of Development Dynamics, Dr Jude Ohanele, has said the recently conducted Anambra state governorship election was not free from electoral problems, although it made some remarkable improvements.
He stated this during a press briefing by his outfit and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Owerri.
Ohanele, whose outfit observed the election, disclosed that a lot of logistics challenges on the part of INEC and gross buying of votes were glaring and that if compared with those of Ekiti and Kogi that were previously held, the latter could be said to have an edge over the former.
He said in Ekiti, voting materials arrived as early as 9.30 am and voters were running to different polling stations to cast their votes, and that it was the same story in Kogi where there was also a good election.
“In the case of Anambra, however, as at 9.30am, 75 per cent of polling units had materials where as others had none, especially in Nzam, the headquarters of Anambra West local government area,” he said.
He also said that posters giving vital information like LGA, community, polling unit, etc to the voters as was present in Ekiti and Kogi were not present, but noted that the late arrival of collation officers disorganised politicians because they could not identify them on time to do business with them.
Ohanele, however, observed that an improvement was recorded in Anambra in that INEC was not compromised and that the election outcome was peaceful as losers took the results in good faith when they were announced.
In his contribution, the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Imo state, Prof. Chukwuemeka Ezeonu said his commission was improving and would continue to improve as it moved on, explaining that they failed in areas they were not in control of and excelled in other areas.
Prof. Ezeonu was of the belief that the long term training of youth corpers rather than on ad-hoc basis and the availability of technical officers in every locality to attend to faulty card readers had helped to improve the commission’s work generally and warned operators of card readers not to remove batteries to correct a problem as it could lead to loss of the entire programme.

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