Yiaga Africa Deploys 646 Observers for Ondo Election

As part of efforts to ensure proper monitoring of the October 10th governorship election in Ondo state, Yiaga Africa, a non-governmental organization, on Wednesday said it will deploy 646 observers to monitor the election in all the 18 local governments of the state.

Yiaga Africa said the observers will be deployed in pairs to a representative random sample of 300 polling units in every local government in the state.

The Director of Programme of the organization, Cynthia Mbamalu, told newsmen at a media parley in Akure, that the observers in pairs will send their reports on the spot for collation through what she described as Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) observation methodology.

She stressed the need to educate voter in Ondo state on the need to go out and cast their votes for the candidate of their choice.

Mbamalu noted that whenever there’s low turn-out of voters at a particular polling unit, it gave room for result manipulation.

According to Cynthia, “It is important to let the people know that they should go out to vote on the election day so that they can decide who would manage their affairs for another four years. Those who fail to go out invariably give the few to determine their fate.
“It must be noted that when a few people go out to vote, it creates an avenue for politicians to manipulate the election results.”

The Director of Programme explained that the organization would compare the results recorded from each selected polling units and compare the same with the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to know whether the results announced are a true representation of the people’s votes.

According to her, Yiaga’s report had assisted INEC in detecting its officials who compromised their roles as unbiased umpires and a number of such fraudulent officials had been arraigned in court.