It was a rain of vote buying and selling in some polling units during the governorship election in Ekiti state, yesterday, June18, INEC accredited observers have reported.

The observers stated that desperate politicians devised another methods to compromise the electoral process during and after the voting exercise as they induced the voters and some security operatives with cash ranging from N7,000. 00, and food items like Semovita, Spaghetti.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA), Ms Faith Nwadishi who monitored the exercise in Ekiti, alongside 50 other accredited field observers of the Centre noted that, “Regrettably, our observers reported that the phenomenon of vote buying that is fast becoming a major feature of our democracy was manifest during this election. Our observers also reported parties paying as much as N7000 for votes while in some instances packs of Sphagetti and Semovita were shared to voters”.

She said this in her preliminary evaluation of the exercise.

She said report from the field indicated that the voting process was generally peaceful except for pockets of violence is some polling units.

“Our field observers report indicated that polling officials arrived early in most of the polling units, with many of the polling units opening around 8.30am This is an indication of improvement with regards to election logistics arrangement on the part of INEC. We hope this improvement will be consolidated upon and carried into the 2023 general elections”, Nwadishi stated.

The CTA stated that performance and conduct of INEC officials were satisfactory, noting, “In most of the polling units covered by our observers, polling officials exhibited professionalism and knowledge of their duties”.

On performance of the BVAS, Nwadishi said, “Compared to other states were BVAS was deployed, reports from the field indicate that the BVAS performed very well in the Ekiti elections with voter accreditation taking between 2 to 3 minutes on the average”.

Similarly the CTA executive director applauded security agents deployed to ensure the maintenance of law and order for arriving their polling units promptly, as well as for professional conducts. “However, there were pockets of complaints about the welfare of the deployed security agents”, she stated.

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