#OsunDecides: Yiaga Africa raises alarm over imbalance distribution of voters to polling unit

By Jethro Ibileke

With less that 36 hours to the 16 July governorship election in Osun State, Yiaga Africa has raised the alarm over alleged inadequate information on allocation and imbalance in the distribution of voters to polling unit.

It disclosed this on Thursday in its pre-election statement signed by Samson Itodo and Ezenwa Nwagwu (Executive Director and Board Member respectively), and made available to our correspondent.

“Yiaga Africa commends INEC’s effort to relocate polling units from palaces, private residents and other controversial locations.

“However, there are two major issues of concern for stakeholders. First, the inadequate information in the public about the relocation of some voters’ new polling units’ can potentially disenfranchise voters who may be unable to locate their polling unit on election day.

“This was recently observed in the Ekiti election where some voters’ names were not found on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) despite their Permanent Voters Card being for that polling unit.

“Secondly, the imbalance in the distribution of voters to polling units. Despite the creation of additional polling, there are oversized units with registered voters above the threshold of 750 registered voters per polling unit.

“Osun State has 246 polling units with over 1000 registered voters, Eight (8) polling units with over 2000 registered voters and One (1) polling unit with over 3,000 Registered voters. Oversized polling units may pose a logistical challenge on election day.

“It is imperative for INEC to revisit the expansion of voter access to polling units in order to achieve the desired outcome of the creation of new polling units,” the statement noted.

Meanwhile, Yiaga Africa said it is deploying its Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology for Saturday’s election.

The PVT is an advanced election observation methodology that employs well-established statistical principles and sophisticated information technologies in providing timely and accurate information on the conduct of accreditation, voting, and counting.

The PVT is capable of independently verifying if the official governorship results as announced by the INEC reflects the votes cast across the polling units.

Also, the citizen-led group will deploy no fewer than 500 stationary observers to a representative statistical sample of 250 polling units and 32 mobile observers located in all 30 LGAs of Osun state.

It will also deploy 30 collation centre observers to each of the LGA Collation Centers.