A civil society organization, YIAGA Africa has charged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ensure that the November 16 Kogi governorship poll is transparent and credible.
At a press briefing in Lokoja on Friday, YIAGA tasked INEC to ensure that all election day polling unit and collation processes are conducted within its own guidelines to forestall complaints of bias and illegality.
YIAGA Executive Director, Samson Itodo, at pre-election press briefing, counseled security agencies on the need to avoid harassing and intimidating voters, election officials, observers and members of the media.
He urged the security agencies to remain neutral, address professionally early warming signs of violence, protect vulnerable voters especially women and people living with disabilities. The group also charged relevant stakeholders that deployment of security personnel and logistics should be all round and not restricted.
He announced that YIAGA will deploy 500 observers to a representative statistical sample of 250 polling units and 26 mobile observers located in all the 21 LGA during Kogi governorship election.
He charged INEC to provide accurate and adequate information on the electoral process, by ensuring that polling results sheets are posted at the polling units and ward collation centres.
He appealed to contesting political parties and contestants not to throw the state into turmoil but instead to keep the peace, for voters to exercise their civic responsibilities.
The group equally charged voters to conduct themselves in a peaceful manner throughout the process and asked the people to turn out enmass and vote their preferred governorship candidate.
YIAGA says it will release its estimated projections for the election based on preliminary data by Saturday evening, while on Sunday it will share it preliminary WTV findings on the conduct of set up, accreditation, voting and counting of the Kogi state election.
The group also assured that the technology it has put in place would check rigging of the election. It says with PVT technology, it would track vote buying and the environment outside of the polling units.
According to Samson Itodo, summary of findings showed that the political campaigns and rallies were trailed by violence, non compliance with the electoral framework, campaign not based on issue base, raised concerns about displacement of voters in flood pruned areas of the state.
