Ahead of the Ekiti Governorship elections scheduled to hold on 18th June 2022, Yiaga Africa through its Watching The Vote project has kicked-off a citizens engagement program on radio to encourage conversations on informed citizens participation in the upcoming elections. The Radio program tagged “WatchingTheVote Hour” is hosted on Fresh FM 106.9 Ekiti, every Wednesday at 10am.
WatchingTheVote Hour is a platform for citizens’ conversation on the electoral process where citizens engage election stakeholders on how to participate in the process from an informed perspective. The program will feature guests across various election stakeholders like electoral commission, security, Civil Society Organisations, and Marginalised groups in a bid to galvanise concerns and recommendations to ensure increased citizens participation in the process.
The first episode which was held on Wednesday, 27th April, 2022, featured Yiaga Africa’s Head of Elections, Paul James discussing the Watching The Vote election observation plan for the Ekiti Governorship election. He said Yiaga Africa sees elections from a circle approach where it observes the pre-election, election day and post-election period.
According to him, the pre-election environment has a tendency of affecting what happens on election day and that’s why Yiaga Africa is tracking the level of preparations and other pre-election activities by all elections stakeholders in the state.
He added that for the Election Day observation, Yiaga Africa’s Watching the Vote will be using an advanced election day observation methodology called the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT). He further explained that the PVT is an election day observation methodology that leverages statistics and technology for the observation of the process of voting and counting and tallying of results.
“The PVT allows Yiaga Africa’s WTV to present an accurate and comprehensive assessment of the election day processes, such as whether election officials comply with the guidelines for the conduct of elections, the presence of security agents, the presence and behaviour of party agents, the secrecy of the ballot and transparency of the counting process,” he said.
