As parts of measures towards consolidating the Nigeria democracy, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has been urged to embrace the use of the card reader machines to transmit voting results from polling units to INEC collation centres.

Assessing the just concluded Presidential and National Assembly election in the Southwest Nigeria, a Civil Society Organisation, Kimpact Development Initiative, KDI through its Nigeria Election Violence Report, NEVR project observed that the present manual collation process was too cumbersome and vulnerable to manipulation.

The Southwest coordinator of the NEVR project, Mr Bukola Idowu who made the presentation to journalists in Osogbo, the Osun State capital, noted further that the current manual collation which could lead to fatigued manpower was also responsible for the long hours and delay in collation of results experienced in the election.

Mr Idowu appealed to INEC to make such recommendations so that the electronic collation could be given legal impetus ahead of the 2023 general election.

According to the report, two people lost their lives across the Southwest Nigeria during the last Saturday election, a development described as unhealthy for democratization process and the general development of the country.

KDI commended the electoral umpire for improved performance, while it also scored security institutions high for their professional conduct during the election.

It however expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct and display of incompetence by some INEC ad-hoc staff, who found difficult to manipulate the card reader machine or do a minor calculation of the votes.

In a remark, the Independent National Electoral Commission, represented by its Deputy Director, Voter Education, Venerable Stephen Ojewande said the commission was in support of the establishment of Electoral offences Commission to fast track the prosecution of election offenders.

Venerable Ojewande also appealed to the media to be fair and objective in their reportage, most especially while reporting sensitive matter like elections.

Similarly, the police also dispelled the rumour that people were killed in Ijebu Ijesa in Oriade Local Government during the election.

The Assistant Commissioner in charge of Operations, Mr Wallace Oyakilome explained that nobody was killed when some hoodlums attacked the INEC office in Oriade Local government, but stray bullets hit two adhoc staff who are currently in stable condition.

Adenitan Akinola

pub-5160901092443552

Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *