ANAMBRA GUBER: PRELIMARY PROCESS STATEMENT ON THE ANAMBRA 2017 GUBERNATORIAL ELCTION BY YIAGA. .

PRELIMINARY PROCESS STATEMENT ON THE ANAMBRA 2017 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION BY YIAGA

BY BENEDICT ODINAKA As part of struggle to ensure free and fair election in Anambra governorship election, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement.(YIAGA) has organized a press briefing at Finotel Hotel, Sunday 19th 2017. According to the chair YIAGA WTV Working group, Mr Hussani Abdu (PHD), He said that this press briefing is the third in series hosted by YIAGA WTV for the 2017 Anambra governorship election. He said that this press briefing covers the preliminary findings about the conduct of accreditation, voting, and counting of vote. "Although YIAGA has received data from 243 of 250 (97%) sampled polling units and currently has a stable estimates for the election outcome, it is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that has the mandate to announce election results" He emphasized .Mr Hussani Abdu went further to say that as soon as the  INEC releases the result and if it is contrary to what the YIAGA has that they will expose it.  Speaking at the press briefing the chair applauded the Anambrarians for thier commitment to democratic process adding that there is the possibility of determining the leadership of the State through peaceful, transparent and credible elections. Meanwhile Mr Hussani said that Watching the vote( WTV ) data is based on the the parallel vote tabulation (PVT) methodology - the gold standard for citizen election observation. He revealed that on Election day, WTV deployed 500 stationary observers to representative statistical sample of 250 polling units and 29 mobile observers in all 21 local government areas of Anambra state. According to him these he said will enable YIAGA to to provide timely and accurate information on the conduct of accreditation, voting, and counting as well as to independently verify the official results for the Anambra gubernatorial election as announced by INEC. He assured the press that if the official reports of the INEC reflects the ballots cast at the polling unit then YIAGA will confirm the outcome but if however the result announced  have been manipulated and do not match the the result posted at polling units then, YIAGA will expose it. Speaking on the pre-election period and the electoral environment, Mr Hussani said that as YIAGA collected pre-election environment data collected from the long- term observers (LTOs) in all the 21 local government in the state. He said that they observed an increase in INEC level of preparedness over time, insufficient voter education messages targeting the youth, woman,and persons with disabilities (PWDs), the prevalence of gender,faith and age based hate speech;few reports of violent physical or verbal attack on party rallies or meeting, but some incidents of vandalism and destruction of property, high level of registration by women and youth; and campaigning predominantly by four political parties - All progressive congress (APC), All Progressive Gland Alliance (APGA), People Democratic Party (PDP).  YIAGA WTV Working Group observed some critical incidents arising at election day which he said that over the course of the election day that the data center received 36 confirmed critical incidents reports.The distribution of the critical incidents by senatorial district is six from Anambra Central, four from Anambra north, and 26 from Anambra south while the most common critical cases were 14 cases of card reader malfunction and six cases of vote buying or bribery.Said he. He said that  YIAGA WTV has received reports attempts by stakeholders especially politicians to compromise the result collation process at the local government collation centers. He added that the transparency of collation process is critical for the success of the election." We would like to inform all stakeholders, that YIAGA WTV has its estimates for the election result based on the untainted official results collected from the polling units. Therefore we are able to expose and manipulation of the results at either ward or LGA collation centers." He said.