A Civil Society Organization, Yiaga Africa, has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to clarify the status of locations where voting did not hold in the off-cycle polls which held in Bayelsa, Kogi, and Imo states, on Saturday.
Through its Watching The Vote (WTV) initiative, Yiaga said its observers in Imo state say elections did not take place in 12% of sampled polling units.
The CSO said these cases were prevalent in Orsu, Okigwe, Oru East, and Orlu LGAs. Yiaga said it monitored the upload of results on the IReV, especially those from polling units where elections did not hold.
For Orsu LGA in Imo, Yiaga Africa’s WTV observers reported that the election did not take place in nine sampled polling units in the LGA.
There were speculations that INEC may have relocated all polling units to the LGA headquarters on election day.
The group, said its team of election observers, Watching The Vote (WTV), found out that the governorship election did not take place on Saturday in 12 per cent of its sampled polling units in the state.
It said in its statement signed by the chair of its WTV Working Group, Hussaini Abdu, on Sunday, that despite the non-voting, results from some of the affected polling units had been uploaded on INEC’s IReV.
IReV is INEC’s publicly accessible online platform where members of the public can view the photographic copies of result sheets from all polling units where voting takes place.
Yiaga Africa said voters in Orsu LGA were not informed of the change in polling unit location and INEC failed to issue an official statement on the supposed temporary relocation of polling units.
In Okigwe LGA in Imo State, Yiaga Africa observers reported that elections did not occur in eight sampled polling units.
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“In Oru East LGA, the election was not held in eight of Yiaga Africa’s sampled polling units,” the CSO added.
“In addition, elections were not held in seven of our sampled polling units in Orlu LGA and in one (1) of our sampled polling units each in Ideato North, Ikeduru, Oru West and Owerri West LGAs.”
“Yiaga Africa is deeply concerned with the upload of results form EC8A for some of the sampled polling units where elections were not conducted in Orsu, Oru East, Oru West, Ideato North, Ikeduru and Okigwe LGAs on the IReV,” the group’s statement said.
