YIAGA Africa worried over non-compliance with collation guidelines

An international election monitoring group, YIAGA Africa, has expressed worry over the non-compliance with result collation guidelines by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, officials on the preparations for the Saturday governorship and state house of assembly elections across the country.

Chairman of YIAGA Africa, Hussaini Abdu, at a pre-election media conference in Abuja, advocated that INEC should fully address all the shortcomings that characterized the February 23 elections to restore public confidence in the process.

YIAGA Africa remarked that during the February 23 elections, the smartcard readers were not used throughout the process of accreditation of voters in seven per cent of polling units.

YIAGA Africa also called on all political parties contesting in the governorship election to encourage their supporters to vote within the ambit of the law and refrain from electoral bribery.

Unlike the presidential and national assembly elections, YIAGA said it would not be deploying the parallel vote tabulation (PVT) methodology to verify the authenticity of the results; rather it would assess the election process directly at the polling units and collation centres.