Yiaga Africa has commended the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission’s (LASIEC) for the efforts to deploy the smart card readers for the accreditation of voters and for the initiative to seek technical support from Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC).In a Preliminary statement issued at the just concluded 2021 Lagos Local Government Council Elections and read by the Board member of Yiaga Africa , Ezenwa Nwangwu and Director of Programs, Yiaga Africa , Cynthia Mbamalu also commended the people of Lagos State, LASIEC and security agencies for the peaceful conduct of the elections.
They also commended Nigerians across the state who volunteered as observers for the Lagos state LGA election.According to them, as a more sustainable plan, Yiaga Africa recommends an efficient system of technical partnership between INEC and States Independent Electoral Commission to ensure that elections at all levels are conducted according to the standards of electoral integrity.“Yiaga Africa calls on citizens in Lagos state and across Nigeria to wake up to their civic responsibilities and exercise their rights to vote as citizens. Nigeria’s democracy can only be safeguarded if citizens actively participate and hold the government accountable.
“Voting remains a fundamental and the only determinant of the representatives who represent the people in government. “Yiaga Africa is committed to driving reforms in improving the quality of local government elections and remains resolute in promoting credible elections by providing independent information on the conduct of elections. They recalled that on Saturday, 24 July 2021, Yiaga Africa’s Watching the Vote (WTV) deployed trained and accredited roving observers to observe the process across the 20 LGAs and 37 LCDA in the State.
They said though Yiaga Africa did not deploy the Parallel Votes Tabulation (PVT) Methodology for the Lagos LGA elections, it deployed a robust election observation methodology that includes observation of the election day process (from opening and setup of the polling units, accreditation, voting, announcement and posting of the official results) at the polling units and the result collation process at the 20 LGAs Results Collation Centres. According to them, Lagos State LGAs elections were characterized by similar shortcomings observed in other elections in Nigeria. These include; late opening of polls and deployment of election materials, disregard for the electoral guidelines, confusion over the non-inclusion of a contesting party on the ballot, non-deployment of political party agents and voter apathy.
