Independent election observers that monitored the governorship election in Ondo State last weekend has urged candidates of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to accept the result announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the result reflects votes cast by the electorate.

The election observers operating under the auspices of the Project Swift Count (PSC) said in a post-election briefing in Abuja yesterday that the order and magnitude of the INEC results for each of the political parties is the same as the Project Swift Count estimates. Barrister Olusola Oke of the PDP and Chief Akeredolu of the ACN have vowed not to recognise the results as announced by INEC.

But, First Co-chair of PSC, Dafe Akpedeye (SAN), said the group, that had monitored several other elections in the past was able to independently collect and collate official results from polling units and arrive at the same results as INEC and therefore urged the political contestants and the public alike to accord a high degree of confidence that the official results as announced by INEC reflect the votes cast in the Ondo State governorship election.

“Project Swift Count finds generally that the process provided most of the people of Ondo State with a meaningful opportunity to exercise their right to vote and that the official results as announced by INEC accurately reflect the ballots cast at polling units.”

PSC congratulated the citizens of Ondo State for their peaceful and substantial participation in the election and observed that the adequate security presence was of tremendous help in maintaining the peaceful atmosphere.

PSC also declared that though INEC has improved, but meeting the 7.30am target for arrival of voting materials at polling units still remains a challenge. “As at 7.30am, polling officials and election materials had arrived at 47 percent of polling units across Ondo State.

This is comparable to Kebbi (53 percent) and Sokoto (43 percent), and is better than Edo (26 percent), Cross River (19 percent) and Bayelsa (32 percent). “Accreditation of voters had started by 9.00am in 70 percent of the polling units. This is worse than Sokoto (73 percent) but better than Kebbi (65 percent), Edo (44 percent), Cross River (35 percent) and Bayelsa (32 percent). However, by noon accreditation had commenced at 98 percent of the polling units.”
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