Youth group seeks cancellation of elections in Rivers, others

The Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) has called for cancellation of the governorship and state house of assembly elections in Rivers and other states due to violence and other irregularities.

This is contained in its interim report of today’s elections and signed by the Head Research Policy and Advocacy of YIAGA Samson Itodo.

He said that the success of the March 28 Presidential and National Assembly elections raised expectations, and that INEC and security agencies will build on that success and improve on areas of challenge.

Itodo said that reports from the 530 stationary and 30 roving youth observers deployed in 19 states of the Federation to observe the elections and also track the participation of young people in electoral process proved otherwise.

“Although generally most polling stations reportedly had security presence, there are reports that security was either absent or insufficient in a number of places. There have been reports of killings in Ebonyi, Delta, Oyo, and Rivers states. There are also reports of violence, intimidation, harassment of voters/observers and disruptions in Abia, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Ekiti, Edo, Kogi, Nassarawa and Rivers States. The violence has been credited to the activities of political thugs and in some cases, party agents,” Itodo said.

While saying that the disruption of accreditation was reportedly as a result of incomplete materials or interference by political thugs and that the cases were isolated and not widespread, he added that there were improvements in the functionality of the Card Readers compared to the experience during the Presidential elections. “However, there were still some challenges: in some places, there were no spare batteries; in some others, the Card Readers were faulty or had not been reconfigured after the presidential elections. So of these situations were however quickly addressed. But there were also isolated reports of manual accreditation and parallel accreditation and voting,” he added.

On Rivers State, Itodo said: “The security reports from Rivers State have been worrisome. If the situation continues to escalate it would undermine the free expression of the will of the people through the ballot. In that case, we would strongly urge INEC to consider cancelling and rescheduling the elections in Rivers State.”

He therefore urged INEC to among others follow up on its ad hoc staff in potentially volatile areas to ensure that they are not under any form of duress or undue influence to compromise the process and that security agencies should reinforce security in identified flashpoints and areas of violence while reported incidents should be investigated and urgently addressed.