An election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa, has said it will use the process and results verification for transparency to independently assess and verify the accuracy of the official results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission in the November 16 off-cycle governorship election in Ondo State.

The group, with its Watching the Vote, explained that the PRTV, otherwise known as the advanced election-day observation methodology, would assist in leveraging statistics and technology to observe the voting process, counting, and tallying results of the Ondo election.

Yiaga Africa’s Programme Manager, Paul James, disclosed this on Tuesday at a stakeholders meeting with leaders of civil society organisations and media professionals in Akure ahead of the governorship election.

According to Mr James, the group will deploy its citizen observers to randomly sample polling units to collect data on the conduct of elections and official polling unit-level results using the advanced methodology.

He explained that with the results assembled from the sampled polling units, the citizen observer group could release projected estimates and verify the accuracy of results declared by the election management body.

“Using this methodology, observer reports are sent via SMS to a central database which enables WTV to analyze and share timely findings on the conduct of the election in near real-time.

“The PRVT allows Yiaga Africa’s WTV to present an accurate and comprehensive assessment of the election day processes, such as whether election officials comply with the guidelines for the conduct of elections, the presence of security agents, the presence and behavior of party agents, the secrecy of the ballot and transparency of the counting process. It is the only observation methodology that can independently verify the accuracy of election day results as released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which is legally mandated to do so,” he said.

The group also stated that it would be deploying 324 stationary, Watching The Vote observers to a representative random sample of 300 polling units in the 18 local government areas of the state.

Explaining that the observers would use their mobile phones to text messages of observation reports to Yiaga Africa’s Data Center, it stressed that each observer would receive a structured observation checklist and a critical incident form to ensure uniformity in the observation process.

“WTV Observers will report on the opening of polling units, accreditation and voting, counting, and the announcement/posting of results.

“WTV Observers will also send in official results as announced by the election officials at polling units to the WTV Data Center. For additional oversight, WTV will also deploy 18 observers to observe the result collation process at the LGA Result Collation Centres and 1 observer to observe at the State Results Collation Centre.”

Yiaga, however, highlighted selecting statistical samples of polling units, recruiting observers who live near sampled polling stations, training observers on how to observe and report, analysing election data, reporting among several others for the success of the PRTV methodology.