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The Nigerian Bar Association said on Sunday that the Saturday’s elections experienced some logistical shortcomings despite the postponement of the exercise from its originally scheduled date of February 16.
The association, through its Election Working Group 2019, said in its preliminary report released on Sunday that the lapses experienced during the polls were avoidable.
In the report signed by its Chairman, Afam Osigwe, the EWG noted that largely, the polls started later than the 8am scheduled time.
It also reported that the drawbacks which it said were mostly experienced in the South-South and South-East zones led to undersupply or oversupply of electoral materials especially ballot papers.
Osigwe said in the report that in some isolated cases in Owerri, the Imo State capital, the polls were conducted with photocopies of approved ballot papers.
The report stated, “This drawback was, however, more manifest in the states of the South-South, South-East, South-West and North-Central regions of the country.
“In a number of polling units across the country, election materials, especially ballot papers, were either oversupplied (i.e. in excess of the registered voters in the polling unit) or undersupplied.
“From reports available to us at this time, this situation was prevalent in the South-South and South-East sub-regions, particularly in Edo, Akwa Ibom, Imo and Enugu states respectively.
“The 2019 NBA-EWG notes as well that in isolated cases (Owerri in Imo State for example), INEC officials conducted the elections using photocopies of approved ballot papers.”
The EWG also said its members observed that “party thugs and hoodlums had a field day invading voting centres to harass, molest and intimidate voters and, in some instances, the Independent National Electoral Commission officials.”
It added that in places where these “despicable acts” were recorded “security agents were either complacent or complicit. Rivers, Lagos and Kogi states were notorious in this regard.”
It also said its members “confirmed reports from different parts of Nigeria where voters were prevented, hindered or inhibited from performing their civic responsibilities on the suspicion that their votes had the potential to produce outcomes that were undesirable to or unintended by the illegal “enforcers” and “gatekeepers””
On the use of card reader machine, the EWG said, “It was reported that in most of such peculiar cases, such discretion was exercised against the registered voters. By and large, the preponderance of opinion from the NBA-EWG 2019 is that the smart card device although it may not have totally failed the integrity test, created appreciable anxiety among the voting populace consequent upon the reported cases of malfunction and/or outright performance failure of the device.”
