The African Union election observation mission (AUEOM) has released its preliminary assessment on last Saturday’s presidential and National Assembly elections in Nigeria.
In its report, released on Monday, the mission voiced worry over the delay in the start of voting in 83% of the polling locations it inspected.
“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 statement reads.
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The mission, however, urged for a revision of the “electoral logistics operations strategy to ensure timely deployment of electoral material and staff and necessary capacity building”.
The mission also criticized the disproportionate distribution of voters per polling unit, saying that the imbalance in electorate distribution burdened electoral authorities.
The AUEOM also praised INEC for deploying the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), but noted that the restricted number of devices hampered the smooth operation of the process.
The AUEOM recommended that the number of BVAS devices “deployed at each polling unit to match the allocation of voters per unit” be regulated.
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