YIAGA’s Debrief: CSO’s, Media Says Ondo Election Peaceful But Not Credible 

By Joseph Sunday 

The Civil Society Organizations and the Media in Ondo State during the recent YIAGA Africa debriefing held at Dejavu Hotel in Alagbaka, Akure made its views known, saying the Ondo State Governorship Election held on Saturday, the 16th of November 2024 was only peaceful but not credible.

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This was contained in a statement made public by the YIAGA Africa, where it said both the CSOs and media community in Ondo State, had maintained that though the election was peaceful, they could not say it was credible. 

During the debrief, YIAGA Africa highlighted some of the recommendations raised by the Civil Society Organizations and the media to include, the need to reduce the cost of elections in Nigeria in view of the harsh economic realities of the citizens, channeling the funds saved into areas where Nigerians would benefit and ensured the secrecy of the ballot to discourage vote buying in subsequent elections in the Country. 

Specifically, Media Practitioners at the debrief faulted the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission not to carry out the distribution of the media accreditation tags to journalists before the election at the NUJ Secretariat in Akure as it has been done in previous staggered elections in the Country. 

Also, participants at the one day YIAGA Africa debriefing emphasized on the need for more voters education and sensitization to be carried out and planned in future elections in the Country. The need for it was considered very important to strengthen the Country’s 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.

Earlier before the debrief with the Civil Society Organizations and the media in Ondo State, YIAGA Africa also held a debrief with its Long – Term Observers team, LTO’s, 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, which was part of the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology employed for the observation by them. 

The observers during their own debrief, also highlighted some of the challenges they experienced during the observation, which includes 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.

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YIAGA Africa revealed that, despite the challenges faced by the observers deployed by them, they still provided data to its 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.

YIAGA Africa however acknowledged during the reflection session with the observers team they deployed, that the  team helped it to notice gaps to fill, thereby helping them to incorporate better strategies for more effective PRVT deployment in future elections. 

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