NigeriaDecides2023: CDD releases preliminary report on polls, alleges voter suppression
A civil society organisation (CSO), the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), released its preliminary report on the conduct of the presidential and national assembly elections yesterday. In the report signed by Adele Jinadu, chairperson of the CDD Election Analysis Centre, the CSO expressed concern over the late arrival of election officials to polling units. The CSO said: “Where voting has started late or where processes have still not started, we encourage INEC to extend the voting period in order to enable all who want to do so to cast their ballot.”
It also said that only 10 per cent of INEC officials arrived on time in the South-East, while the South-South recorded 27 per cent of poll officials arriving early.
Jinadu said: “Data from about 5,000 election observers across the country showed late arrival of poll officials to their respective polling units across the country. CDD-EAC deployed 4,993 observers across the 36 states to keep a close watch on the conduct of the elections.
“Across the country, almost 50 per cent of INEC poll officials arrived on time for the commencement of the process. However, the south east and south south recorded the lowest percentage of poll officials arriving on time.
“In the south east, only 10 percent of poll officials arrived at their respective polling units on time and in the south south it was 27 percent. In the northeast 42 per cent of poll officials got to their polling units on time whilst in the Northwest, Northcentral and Southwest, the figure was over 50 per cent.”
Jinadu further said in Lagos, the state with the highest number of registered voters recorded just 18 percent in terms of timely arrival of INEC officials, adding that the average opening time across the country was 9:25am, compared to 8:30am when the voting was scheduled to start.
On the availability of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), the CDD rated the performance as 98.8 percent across polling units. Nation
