Election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa, has called for the investigation and prosecution of electoral officials, who aided and abetted irregular conduct in the March 18 elections in Rivers State.
The organisation said it observed that returning officers demonstrated poor understanding of the guidelines and misapplied the rules.
According to the Yiaga Africa’s Watching the Vote focal person in the state, Obinna Ebogidi, there were inconsistencies in enforcing the 2022 Electoral Act and INEC guidelines on over voting and cancellation of votes in the application of the Margin of Lead principle.
Ebogidi said council collation officers and state returning officers failed to verify and compare the results recorded on hardcopy result sheets (Form EC 8A) with the results uploaded on the INEC Election Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
He noted that although there was an improvement in the upload of results on the IReV portal, voters did not get an opportunity to hear what their preferred political parties scored, alleging that thugs, sometimes working in collusion with uniform policemen, obstructed sorting and counting and forcefully moved materials to collation centres.
“We observed that security agencies, party supporters, and political thugs denied accredited observers access to collation centres. Opposition parties’ agents were also denied access to Council collation centres across the state. Thugs also attacked collation centres in Ahoada East and West. Polling unit-level results were altered during collation without any explanation from collation officers and returning officers,” he stated.
He called on Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to review cases, where legitimate concerns have been raised on the conduct and declarations made by collation and returning officers.
“Yiaga has also called for the immediate investigation and prosecution of collation and returning officers engaged in results manipulation and flagrant violations of the guidelines on results collation.
“Hence, INEC should, in line with Section 64 of the 2022 Electoral Act, review cases where legitimate concerns have been raised on the conduct and declarations made by collation and returning officers, especially instances where results declaration contravened the electoral legal framework,” he said.
