As part of preparations towards the July 14, 2018 governorship election in Ekiti State, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) stepped down the ongoing Nationwide Continuous Voters Registration (CVR) exercise to the 177 ward registration centers in the State.This is geared towards ensuring that as many citizen that are eligible, are given the opportunity to register in order to exercise their franchise in the forthcoming election.
The decentralized CVR is primarily targeted at persons who turned 18 since the general election in 2015 as well as those who are above 18 but are yet to be registered to vote. The period of the exercise presents an opportunity for those who could not find their names on the Biometric register of voters or did not have the PVC printed for them, to come and get re-registered. The decentralized CVR exercise held from Wednesday April 11 through Monday April 16, 2018.
YIAGA Africa deployed 24 trained and accredited citizen observers to 41% of the 177 ward registration centers spread across the 16 LGAs in Ekiti State to observe the CVR exercise. Employing the rotational observation model, WTV observers deployed over a three (3) day period; April 11th, 14th and 16th and observed through the day in each of the different wards for each of the three (3) days they observed.
The WTV observation exercise had an overall objective of providing independent information on the CVR and PVC distribution exercise by assessing the functionality or effectiveness of the Direct Data Capture (DDC) Machines, observing the level of compliance with the Electoral Law and INEC’s guidelines as well as the level of citizen’s participation in the process.
WTV observers reported that the CVR was conducted in all of INEC’s registration centers that they observed.
However, just like during the August 2017 Anambra State decentralised CVR exercise, the first day of the registration exercise saw late deployment of materials and INEC officials arriving later than 9:00am, but compared with the Anambra CVR exercise, all centers had opened by 10:00am and this was consistent for all the three (3) days observed. Other than the delayed commencement on the first day of the decentralized CVR exercise, #WatchingTheVote’s data showed that there was significant improvement as the exercise progressed.
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