Yiaga Africa has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and other stakeholders for the peaceful conduct of the governorship election held in Ekiti State on Saturday.

Yiaga’s executive director, Samson Itodo, who spoke during a brief post-election interview on Channels TV, said the development marked an improvement in the country’s electoral process.

“To a large extent, everything went well. And this is what an election should look like, in some cases, because it was peaceful. Yes, there were cases of violence. And when we go into data, we’ll clearly see how today has fared,” Mr Itodo stated.

While lauding voters for exhibiting some level of calm and maturity during the process, Mr Itodo decried vote-buying in some parts of the state.

“We have to commend the people of Ekiti State for the way they conducted themselves in a very peaceful manner. But, of course, when we look at other manifestations of voting behaviour, I think there are concerns to express as it relates to the incentives for people coming out to vote or whether the choices people made were not as a result of influence by vote inducement or vote-buying. The vote-buying today is quite unfortunate,” he added.

The Yiaga chief further commended INEC and security agencies for passing the preparedness, transparency and security tests designed to evaluate the election.

“Before the election, Yiaga Africa and other partners conducted three tests to evaluate the entire process: the first one was a preparedness test. To what extent is INEC prepared, managing logistics and opening of votes? As you would see, the data speaks for itself, but there was a marked improvement. INEC passed the preparedness test, so far, so good.

“The second was the transparency test. How the results have been managed from the polling units to the wards and the local government level. Shortly, you’ll see what’s happening to IReV, but we can say, to some extent, there is a high level of transparency. And then the conduct of security agencies and others,” he added.

Mr Itodo’s evaluation of the election came despite allegations of vote-buying raised by the African Democratic Congress (ADC) governorship candidate, Oludare Bejide, during the election.

Mr Bejide noted that thugs and fake policemen harassed his people at his polling unit at Ilawe 2 on Saturday morning, alleging that a presidential aide was behind the violence.

Also, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)’s governorship candidate, Wole Oluyede, said the slow functioning of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) affected his accreditation before voting, describing the electoral process as pure nonsense.