By Ogochukwu Isioma
The Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room says the gubernatorial election in Anambra State was generally peaceful but had widespread vote buying.
In its report on Sunday regarding the polls, the Situation Room gave some specific instances of vote-buying to include the sale of votes for amounts ranging from N1,000 and N6,000 at various locations.
The organization, however, noted that this was being carried out very discreetly in some polling units while in others, the vote buying was done in full glare without prevention from the security personnel.
Nevertheless, the Situation Room disclosed that voters in a particular polling unit in the state rejected an inducement of N5,000 per vote. The agency commended the courage of those voters.
Speaking further, the organization noted that INEC ad-hoc staff and election materials arrived late in many polling units visited by field observers.
Also observed was a widespread malfunction of the Bimodal Verification Accreditation System (BVAS) as it failed to authenticate voters’ fingerprints and detect faces.
“This was the case in 59% of the PUs observed, with a minimum of five minutes to accredit one voter in 65.8% of the PUs observed.
“Furthermore, some of the ad-hoc staff experienced some difficulty in operating the machines. In some locations, the machines were working rather slowly and took as long as 10 minutes or more to accredit a single voter,” the agency stated.
While there were some ills, the election in Anambra had its positive moments.
The Situation Room reports that the voter turnout was good, contrary to earlier apprehensions. Also, INEC ad hoc officials in some instances gave priority to Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), elderly persons and pregnant women in most of the polling units observed. However, some of the polling units were not accessible to some categories of people with special needs.
The organization, while urging the Anambra people to remain peaceful as the election runs its course, called on INEC to ensure the peaceful and transparent conclusion of the polls.
Security agencies were also obliged to continue to maintain law and order through the remaining phases of this exercise.
