Ekiti Decides: Yiaga Africa laments troubling magnitude of vote buying

Yiaga Africa, a civic hub for promoting democratic governance, human rights and civic participation, has described as troubling the magnitude of vote buying and selling during the Ekiti State off-cycle governorship election.

The Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, expressed disappointment in a chat with journalists in Ado-Ekiti on Saturday.

Itodo argued that it would be difficult to attribute the impressive turnout of voters either to incidents of vote buying or to the voluntary decision of voters.

“The biggest worry, which again was predicted, was this issue about vote buying. And we cannot say at this moment, though it is premature, whether the impressive turnout that we saw was either procured or actual turnout based on the wilful decision of voters.

“The levels of vote buying in this election is really troubling. And it was a missed opportunity for all the actors who were determined to reduce vote buying at the election. On the whole, so far with the conduct of the process, we would say that generally the environment was peaceful,” he said.

On his general assessment of the election, Itodo said: “So far so good, the election has been relatively peaceful. There were incidents of violence, no doubt, but if you assess this election based on logistics, we can say compared to 2022 there was a marked and significant improvement in the arrival of INEC officials as well as the accreditation of voters.

“In 2022, from Yiaga Africa’s perspective, only 27 per cent of polling units opened by 7:30 am. But this time, over 68 per cent opened. By 10:30 am, 99 per cent of polling units had recorded commencement. So, in terms of logistics, I will say so far so good because there seems to be a marked improvement,” he said.

Itodo, while appraising the level of violence, said: “We did record cases of violence, and in the afternoon the election observation hub comprising several organisations highlighted critical incidents. We verified and confirmed violence in a couple of local governments. The same local governments that we had said were hotspots, whether it is Ikole, Oye, Ilejemeje, all of them did record some levels of violence.

“Again, hoping that the security agencies will live up to their promise that any incidents or any threats will be neutralised. So we hope that the collation processes will be well secured, but they will also be transparent and open so it doesn’t heighten any tension in this particular election,” he said.