‘Crowded PUs, limited BVAS devices’ — AU releases preliminary report on Nigeria’s polls

The African Union election observation mission (AUEOM) has released its preliminary report on the conduct of the presidential and national assembly elections in Nigeria.

In the report released on Monday, the mission expressed concern over the late commencement of voting in 83 percent of the polling units it monitored.

“The average delay was over an hour. In some cases, they opened as late as 11:00 am. This was largely due to the late arrival of polling officials and materials and the slow set-up of the polling units,” the report reads.

The mission, however, called for a review of the “electoral logistics operations strategy to ensure timely deployment of electoral material and personnel and sufficient capacity building”.

The AUEOM also faulted the unbalanced allocation of voters per polling unit, adding that the disparity in the spread of the electorate strained electoral officials.

“This had several implications on the process including straining some polling staff who had to manage large numbers of voters. Furthermore, this disparity of voter allocation affects optimal utilisation of INEC resources particularly in polling units with minimal voters,” the report reads.

The AUEOM also commended INEC over the deployment of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), but added that there was a limited number of devices, and this affected the smooth conduct of the process.

“The Mission commends the innovation of using BVAS technology to accredit voters. This enhanced the credibility of the process. In 94% of the polling units visited, the BVAS functioned successfully,” the report reads.

“In some cases, the Mission observed that the process was delayed due to the limited number of BVAS compared to the large number of voters allocated to a polling unit which created frustrations among the voters who had to wait longer in the queues.”

In its recommendation, the AUEOM advised the regulation of the number of BVAS machines “deployed at each polling unit to match the allocation of voters per unit”.