Centre for Democracy commends INEC on conduct of Ekiti election

The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), on Saturday commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on the smooth conduct of the Ekiti State governorship election.

A Member of Centre for Democracy and Development Election Analysis Centre (CDD -EAC), Prof. Shola Omotola, stated this in the Centre’s second preliminary statement in Abuja.

He said the INEC conduct of the election was a significant improvement on previous polls.

He added that the general atmosphere of the election was peaceful and INEC officials arrived early for the conduct of the exercise.

Omotola said: “CDD-EAC observer reports showed that by 8:30 a.m., 64 percent of polling units visited had opened, and between 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., another 29 percent had opened.

“The data indicate that 93 percent of the Polling Units in the areas observed had started voting by 9:30 a.m.

“The CDD-EAC data point to a high usage of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) with 88 percent of polling units visited reporting effective usage.

Read also: EFCC arrests agents over alleged vote-buying in Ekiti guber poll

“Although there were hitches in very few locations, where our observers noted that some voters could not be accredited, the CDD-EAC observers rated the efficiency of the BVAS as either “very good or excellent.”

He added that in the 31 reported cases where the BVAS malfunctioned, 71 percent of those cases were resolved within an hour.

“On the average therefore, CDD-EAC data indicated that it took around 2.4 minutes for voters to be processed through the BVAS.

“In 45 percent of the cases, voters were accredited in two minutes or less, while in 87 per cent of the cases each voter was accredited within four minutes,” he noted.

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