From Bamigbola Gbolagunte, Akure
An election monitoring group, the Nigerian Women Trust Fund (NWTF), has stressed the need for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to keep a public record of election offenders and ensure that the offenders are dealt with.
Assessing the conduct of last Saturday’s governorship election in Ondo State, the group rated INEC well in the exercise but noticed some infractions in some of the polling centres in the state.
In its post-election statement issued on Wednesday, the group observed that the election was marred by apathy, violence, and vote-buying in many polling centres across the state.
It noted that the polls were relatively peaceful across all 18 Local Government Areas of the state, except for a few cases of violence.
The group also lauded the impressive conduct of women at the polls, even as it urged INEC to provide Gender-Sensitive Voter Education.
Besides this, the group advocated for the continuous training of security personnel to understand observer roles and rights to avoid clashes during elections.
This is in addition to the Non-Governmental Organization’s call for improved welfare and logistics for security agencies deployed for elections.
While warning against compromise in elections, the group made a case for women and persons living with disabilities, saying the two categories of people should be given consideration while voting.
The group observed that “overwhelming cases of vote trading were recorded and observed across most of the vote-buying and selling.”
It called on stakeholders to do everything possible to avert vote-buying in future elections.