Ahead of the Kogi and Bayelsa state polls, YIAGA AFRICA’s Watching The Vote (WTV) project has concluded training and has deployed 48 Long Term Observers (LTO) to the pre-election environment.
Out of the 48 observers who are all resident of the local governments they are observing from, 21 are deployed in Bayelsa state and 27 are deployed in Kogi state .
The observers are also expected to recruit polling unit observers from sampled polling units that will observe the governorship election on November 16th, in both states.
In a statement issued in Abuja signed by the Executive Director , Samson Itodo said the Long Term observes who also double as local government supervisors are deployed to each of the 8 Local Government Areas in the Bayelsa State and the 21 local government areas in Kogi state to report on events, activities and critical incidents using a specialized checklist and critical incident form.
According to him, the observation reports from the field are sent in form of coded SMS to the WTV Data Center bi-weekly commencing from September 13th, 2019, while the critical incidents are sent in as they occur and properly escalated after verification.