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Turnout in Lagos Council Polls abysmal, says YIAGA Africa

YIAGA Africa has described the turnout of electorates during the Lagos State council election as abysmally low. It said the low turnout was across the 20 local government and the 37 local council development areas.

The group in its  situational statement signed by Eze Nwagwu, board member of YIAGA Africa and Cynthia Mbamalu, Director of Programmes of YIAGA Africa, said that the polls was married with late opening of polls and deployment of polling materials. It stated that as of 8:30 am no polling official was seen in 61 of the polling units visited by the group.

“Late opening and commencement of polls was a general observation across the state. Specifically, Mushin LGA recorded late deployment. Election officials were still waiting to be deployed to their assigned polling units by 8:16 a.m.

“By 10:00 a.m., only 17 of the polling units visited had polling officials present and were concluding set-up to commence accreditation and voting process. Majority of the polling units visited had an average of two polling officials present as stated in the LASIEC election guideline.

“Also notable is deployment of women as polling officials. At least one of two polling officials were women. Yiaga Africa’s Watching the Vote (WTV) tracked the presence of essential materials such as the register of voters, polling official stamp, voting cubicle, ink pad, ballot boxes, incident form and polling unit booklet in polling units.

“These materials and many more were seen in most of the polling units that were opened. However, the WTV observers reported that the majority of the Smart Card Readers were not fully charged. In addition, the reports indicate that the Smart Card Readers were not used in some of the polling units visited.”

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