Governorship Polls: We Have Deployed 680 Observers Across 29 States – YIAGA 

The Executive Director, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth, and Advancement (YIAGA), Samson Itodo, says about 680 observers will be deployed in all the 680 Local Government Areas (LGAs) for the governorship polls holding across 29 states of the federation.


File: The Executive Director, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA), Samson Itodo.
The Executive Director, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA), Samson Itodo.

 

The Executive Director, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth, and Advancement (YIAGA), Samson Itodo, says about 680 observers will be deployed in all the 680 Local Government Areas (LGAs) for the governorship polls holding across 29 states of the federation.

Itodo said this on Friday during an interview on Channels Television’s special election programme The Verdict, few hours to the commencement of the governorship and House of Assembly elections.

“We at YIAGA Africa have deployed about 680 observers in all the 680 LGAs in the 29 states where the governorship election will be holding and for the states without governorship election, we didn’t deploy observers,” he said.

According to him, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has given assurances of proper logistics and security.

He, however, urged the Commission to ensure that sensitive materials arrive early enough to allow elections commence at 8:00 am as planned.

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“Based on the report we received this morning, there is some appreciable level of deployment of sensitive materials to the local governments.

“And we expect that the racks be opened today so that polling stations can open tomorrow. There are also other issues that INEC needs to address. The polling stations where re-run elections will hold tomorrow, INEC is yet to make that place public,” he stated.

Speaking on the transparency of the result collation process, the YIAGA boss decried the increment of rejected and cancelled votes which he said represented about four per cent as against that of the 2015 general elections.

He also called on INEC to make a public statement on the condition for the cancellation of the rejected votes as witnessed during the recently concluded presidential and National Assembly elections.