Yiaga Africa to deploy 272 election observers

Election observer group, Yiaga Africa, has said it will deploy 272 observers for the June 20 governorship election in Ekiti State.

The Head of Knowledge Management and Learning, Yiaga Africa, Safiya Bichi, said the 272 observers would comprise 250 stationary observers at select polling units and 22 roving ones.

Bichi, who spoke in Ado Ekiti on Wednesday during a civil society organisations and media roundtable on Ekiti State governorship election, said Yiaga Africa would observe the election process, collation and result tabulation.

According to her, the choice of the units where the observers would be stationed on election day would be determined by population.

She said, “We will have more observers stationed in more polling units in local governments with higher populations than others.

The size of the local government will determine the size of the polling units where we will station observers.

“For observation, we’re going to have two types of observers. The first one is what we call the stationary observers. These observers go to the polling units on election day to observe from morning till evening, till the end of the poll. They observe everything in the polling unit.

“Then we are going to be having the categories of observers that we’ll describe as roving observers who will be moving from polling unit to polling unit to also observe elections being conducted and share information.

“Yiaga Africa will deploy 250 stationary observers to 250 sampled polling units. We will also have 22 roving observers at the local government level. In all, we have 272 observers in the state.

“We are going to observe the process starting from the arrival of INEC officials and materials to units on election day.

“We will be at the local government collation centres and the state collation centre observing the process of the collation. We will observe the process of the election, collation and result tabulation.

“We are interested in women and youth. We have always been open to working with persons with disabilities.

“We are going to observe accessibility of polling units, assistive devices and also the filling of the EC40H forms. These are some of the things we are going to be doing,” the Yiaga Africa official said.

Bichi said the roundtable programme was organised to foster collaboration among stakeholders ahead of the election and to identify critical areas requiring intervention.

She said, “The roundtable was designed to create a platform for strategic dialogue, information sharing and knowledge exchange between civil society organisations and the media in preparation for the governorship poll.

She called on the participating political parties, candidates and party members to conduct their campaigns and participation in the election peacefully, just as she tasked the Independent National Electoral Commission and security agencies to maintain professionalism and ensure a credible electoral process.