‘Election peaceful, but marred by voter apathy in Plateau’
An independent election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa, has said party agents for All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) distributed food, cash and alcoholic drinks to voters in exchange for votes in Benue State.
It said that the incident happened in Apir Market Square 1 in Makurdi. Yiaga disclosed this in its mid-day report on the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections signed by its Executive Director, Samson Itodo; Director of Programmes, Cynthia Mbamalu and a member of the Board, Ezenwa Nwagwu.
Nwagwu, who read the report during a media briefing in Abuja, at the weekend, said the organisation received 15 confirmed reports of vote-buying across eight states.
The organisation, which commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for improvement in logistics during the election, urged the electoral body to take urgent remedial actions in polling units where cases of infractions and non-compliance with the 2022 Electoral Act and INEC guidelines occurred.
“This will deepen the legitimacy of the final outcome of the elections.
“INEC should ensure strict compliance with the guidelines for the results collation. Specifically, party agents and accredited media and election observers should be granted access to collation centres. Collation officers should verify the results on the hardcopy result sheets and results transmitted with the BVAS during results collation,” the monitoring group added.
MEANWHILE, voter apathy almost marred Saturday’s governorship and House of Assembly elections in Plateau State though the exercise was peaceful as voters could be counted from afar because there was nothing like long queues.
In most of the polling units, INEC officials were seen either sleeping or eating bread as electorate refused to come out to vote, thereby making them always on the move and active.
Chief of Indigbo in Jos, Chief Eni Okafor, told The Guardian that unprecedented low turnout was in order as they were disappointed by the presidential election where people came out in their numbers believing that justice would be done.
He said: “Unfortunately, after all said and done, what has been happening during the election repeated itself. Before, our votes did not count whereby we would vote for party A and the results would go to party B.
“Look at Imo State where the third candidate became the governor of the state. So, that is why today’s election is low-keyed. People are not happy; people are angry and people are not coming out to vote. So, they believe that if they should come out today to cast their votes, what happened in last presidential election will repeat itself.”
Also, the governorship candidate of the PDP, Caleb Mutfwang, alleged that some result sheets in Jos North Local Council had already been filled.
