Ekiti Election: Yiaga Africa raises alarm over voter inducement
Yiaga Africa, a civil society organisation, has raised an alarm on the rising spate of voters inducement by politicians towards the Ekiti governorship election.
The election is to be held on June 18.
The organisation lamented how politicians have continued to prioritise vote-buying instead of embracing issue-based campaigns, ahead of the poll.
Yiaga, in its preelection Watching The Vote report stated that “Voter inducement persists while questions remain around the allocation of voters to new polling units lingers.”
The statement was released by the organisation’s director of programmes, Cynthia Mbamalu.
Ms Mbamalu also observed that the participation in the mock election exercise conducted by the INEC was poor due to the shallow publicity for the event.
According to her, the electoral body must ensure the timely and adequate training of all its ad-hoc staff in preparation for the election.
The organisation tasked INEC to “ensure uniformity in its processes and consistency in the application of its guidelines across all polling units and LGAs in other to build confidence in the process.”
The group also charged “security agencies working on the elections should ensure that all personnel deployed are properly trained.
“Security agencies should also ensure the arrest and prosecution of all involved in any form of violence in the days leading to the election.”
Sixteen political parties and their candidates have been cleared by INEC to participate in the exercise.
The political parties include; A, AAC, ADC, ADP, APC, APGA, APM, APP, LP, NNPP, and NRM.
Others are; PDP, PRP, SDP, YPP, and ZLP.
The battle of who takes over from Governor Kayode Fayemi has become more intense than ever as the candidates for the poll have been crisscrossing the 16 local councils of the state, soliciting support from voters.
INEC had also said 734,746 had collected their Permanent Voters Cards, PVCs, as of June 1, out of the 988,923 that registered as voters in the state.
According to the Resident Electoral Commissioner, REC, in the state, Adeniran Tella, the figure represents 74 percent while the balance of PVC uncollected still stood at 254,117.
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