Lagos, Nigeria
Act Daily News
—
How do you stage elections for greater than 93 million voters? With nice problem, complications, delays and technical points, it seems.
More than 24 hours after the polls closed, some Nigerians had been nonetheless voting in Africa’s largest democratic train.
The numbers are staggering; Nigeria has 176,606 polling items and voting handed with out incident in most of them.
However, it was overshadowed by widespread experiences of delays, technical points, and assaults and voter intimidation at some polling stations.
A Act Daily News workforce in Lagos noticed voters nonetheless looking for a method to solid their poll Sunday at a faculty in Lagos the place two polling items didn’t get to vote in Saturday’s elections.
In the capital Abuja, voting continued till late on Saturday, as voters used automotive headlights to assist themselves see.
When a Act Daily News workforce visited some polling items, dozens of voters had been nonetheless ready to solid their poll. In components of Lagos, voting went on properly into midnight.
The election is without doubt one of the most hotly contested contests for the reason that finish of navy dictatorship in 1999, and the two-party system that has dominated Nigerian politics since then is going through an unprecedented risk.
The frontrunners are Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the ruling APC social gathering, Atiku Abubakar from the PDP and Peter Obi from the lesser-known Labour Party.
Obi, 61, has gained in recognition and is seen because the third power candidate that would emerge as chief.
Many of his supporters, principally first time voters, who registered in enormous numbers to vote, complained of makes an attempt to suppress their vote.
At one polling unit in Lekki, Lagos, a number of individuals had been attacked.
Dr. Chidi Nwagwu instructed Act Daily News: “I arrived at around 10am. Polling materials were late and we set up to start voting. Some thugs arrived and started hitting people with chairs. I was hit several times with a chair. There was a doctor who helped us. A lot of women were attacked, including a pregnant woman. She was knocked to the ground and they smashed her phone.”
Alicia Gberikon stated: “There was harassment and if you had a phone that was a crime. People were beaten and had their phones smashed. It was very scary.”
Yiaga Africa, a non-profit civic group that deployed 3,836 observers throughout the nation stated it was disillusioned with the elections. “There’s a sense of disappointment, quite frankly, with the way this process has gone. Clearly, we’ve not overcome and resolved, perennially our logistical challenges with elections,” Samson Itodo, Yiaga’s Executive Director instructed Act Daily News.
This was alleged to be the 12 months that the electoral fee would supply real-time outcomes through its new portal, iReV.
Yiaga stated it was involved that as of Saturday 10pm native time, when outcomes had been identified from 1000’s of polling items, they’d not been uploaded to the electoral fee’s voting portal.
“It raises a lot of questions about the entire process because it deviates from the guidelines for the elections. But it also casts doubt on the integrity of this entire process,” Itodo stated.
“To make matters worse, the commission is not speaking or has not spoken to Nigerians.”
The chairman of the electoral fee (INEC) Chairman Mahmood Yakubu briefly addressed the nation at a media briefing on Sunday the place he defined the collation course of however didn’t deal with the problems round outcomes transmission.
Yakubu reported there have been pockets of violence throughout the nation and electoral machines often called Bimodal Voter Accreditation system (BVAS) had been misplaced in a few of these disruptions.
Source: www.cnn.com