A non governmental organization, the Centre for Transparency and Advocacy CTA has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC on it performance in the Saturday’s governorship Election in Ekiti State.
CTA described the poll as the best in the history of the country’s electoral system.
The President of the NGO, Mrs Faith Nwadishi at a press briefing held in Ado, commended the efforts of the Electoral Umpire for putting in place an election that serves as an example in the country.
She said “Our field observers report indicated that polling officials arrived early in most of the polling units, with many of the polling units opening around 8.30am, this is an indication of improvement with regards to election logistics arrangement on the part of INEC. We hope this improvement will be consolidated upon and carried into the 2023 general elections.”
“We have report that voter accreditation and voting started on time in most of the polling units observed. While there were hitches in a few polling units, our observers report indicated that about 80% of polling units opened on time.”
On BVAS Performance, Mrs Nwadishi explained it performed very well in the Ekiti elections with voter accreditation taking between 2 to 3 minutes on the average.
She affirmed that, “our observers reported that the phenomenon of vote buying that is fast becoming a major feature of our democracy was manifest during this election. Our observers also reported parties paying as much as N7000 for votes while in some instances packs of Sphagetti and Semovita were shared to voters. It is heartwarming to observe that some culpable party agents were arrested by the agents of EFCC. INEC, the Security Agencies and other stakeholders need to work out measures to effectively address this ugly phenomenon.