Osun: Situation Room calls on INEC to make e-collation accessible to stakeholders
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The Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to open up its e-collation system to independent election observers and other critical stakeholders in the electoral process.
This, it said, will not only eliminate the suspicion that clouds the exclusive use of the e-collation system by the electoral body but also create an understanding of this aspect of the election process and win support for its use.
The new system invloves the electronic transmission of results from the polling units to the collation centre.
This was contained in a preliminary report of the Osun State Governorship election released on Sunday by Situation Room – a coalition of over 70 civil society organisations.
The report commended the commission for early accreditation and voting as well as political parties for conducting themselves well.
Convener of the group, Clement Nwankwo who signed the report, observed that voters came out en masse as early as 7am to exercise constitutional franchise.
The report, however, lamented the slow accreditation of voters due to delay in the functioning of the Smart Card Readers.
The report observed that although there were incidents of votes buying, they happened in a ‘less brazen manner’ unlike other off-cycle elections.
“Incidents (of votes buying) seemed subtler. The announcement by INEC and law enforcement officials that suspects would be arrested and charged to court, and the actual deployment of security personnel to enforce this, helped significantly.
“Situation Room calls on INEC to intensify the training of the different cadres of its staff to enhance their understanding of election duties and increase their confidence and ability to respond to election day challenges.
“There needs to be more improvement in the placements of voting cubicles as well as modifications to its present configuration in order to protect the secrecy of the ballot and curtail vote buying. Greater efforts to curb vote buying should be introduced to apprehend and prosecute offenders as a disincentive and deterrent to all.
“On collation of results, Situation Room is concerned that the process of collation is delayed and appears to happen mostly at night when the political parties, candidates, Observers and other election stakeholders may have depleted away from observation of the process, especially with fears of insecurity. This trend needs to change and INEC should consider an improvement and innovation in its processes that will enable the collation of results in as much of daylight as possible and thus reduce night time election activities,” the report reads.
OWEDE AGBAJILEKE, Abuja