The Ondo State governorship election has since been concluded, and a winner has been declared. However, election stakeholders are still analysing the election with emphasis on the performance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the electoral umpire and the level of citizen participation in the election. This is why we organised a post-election debrief with our observers, the media, and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Ondo State.
The two-day debrief began with our Long-Term Observers (LTOs), comprising the State Focal Person (SFP) and Local Government Area (LGA) supervisors who served as roving observers on election day and worked for months before the election to observe the pre-election environment against specific benchmarks provided in the pre-election observation checklists and critical incident forms. This is part of the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology employed for the observation.
The observers spoke of some of the challenges they experienced during the observation, including hostility at collation centres from security operatives, poor telecommunications network coverage which forced the observers to improvise for providing near-real-time information, and difficulty in accessing certain terrains.
Despite these challenges, our observers provided data to the Yiaga Africa WTV database covering areas such as the early arrival of polling officials and materials at polling units across the state, early start of polls, the deployment of BVAS across polling units visited, deployment and professionalism of polling officials and security, secrecy of the ballots and attempts to influence polling officials, inclusion of Persons With Disabilities (PWDs) and counting. The reflection session helped the team notice gaps to fill and incorporate better strategies for more effective PRVT deployment.
The second day of the debrief with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the media provided an even more rounded perspective with diverse experiences of the Ondo State governorship elections. A recurrent concern shared by all in the room included the different facets of vote buying across the board. Some members of the group witnessed the nonchalance of security operatives who had received some form of inducement; some had access to information about parties who had budgeted and disbursed money to induce some ad-hoc officials, while some witnessed women using a catch-phrase to state their intentions of getting a share of the loot to enable them to cook meals for their families, others witnessed party agents going into houses to induce people who hadn’t planned on voting to come out and vote their party.
It was interesting to the group that voter turnout continues to decline despite the vote-buying phenomenon. The debrief considered possible factors that enabled low voter turnout during the governorship election, such as heavy military presence, which locals considered frightening and would rather stay home to avoid any interaction with the soldiers. The harsh economic conditions in Nigeria also contributed as some rural dwellers were more concerned about tending their farms instead of participating in the election. Similarly, as more young people leave for urban centres, some of them whose registration centres are in their hometowns did not return to vote. Persons with disabilities also stayed away from the election for fear of unforeseen threats, security operatives and the unavailability of disability-friendly election materials in the past with no hope for improvement.
CSOs and media members maintained that though the election was peaceful, they could not say it was credible. This led to their proposing a few recommendations, including a deliberate effort to reduce the cost of elections in Nigeria, especially during harsh economic times, so that the government can channel the money into other areas of benefit for the citizens, and increased measures to ensure the secrecy of the ballot is another measure that could help deter vote-buying. Media personnel complained about meeting persons accredited by INEC from unknown media institutions, expressing preference if a list of media to be accredited by INEC is shared with the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) secretariat for vetting before accreditation is issued to such individuals.
Overall, voter education and sensitisation campaigns must be considered. This measure is necessary to strengthen our value system as a people and encourage elites to actively engage with the electoral system rather than shy away and allow the “bad eggs” to dominate and take elections captive.
