By Ifeizu Joe
An election observer group, International Peace and Civic Responsibility Centre (IPCRC), has pointed out areas that need to be improved upon in last Saturday’s local government election in Anambra.
The election was conducted by Anambra State Independent Electoral Commission (ANSIEC), close to 11 years after the last one was held.
The group in a press conference addressed by the coordinator, Prince Chris Azor while giving details of its observation during the election commended Governor Chukwuma Soludo for his resilience in ensuring the conduct of the election.
He said: “We deployed over 100 observers in the state to monitor the election, and also co-opted several citizen observers across the state.
“Our observation is that the governor has done well in ensuring democracy at the grassroots, but the biggest room is the room for improvement.
“ANSIEC did well by also pulling it off, despite the shortness of time, but we think there are things that can be improved upon.
“We didn’t quite see the voters’ cubicle in most cases, and also the braille ballot for visually impaired persons.
“The idea is that this is an open secret ballot, open secret ballot in the sense that you get to see the person, but you don’t see where they voted, when they step into the voting cubicle, which is well away from the people. We do not want a case where a landlord will start quarreling with a tenant because the he felt that the tenant voted where he should not have voted.
“Also, there should be the braille ballot for people who are visually impaired, we have to accommodate them, but we didn’t quite see that. These are the things we want the ANSIEC to improve on.”
Azor said there were no incidences of violence or vote buying during the election. He commended security agencies for their role in deploying personnel to all the polling units to maintain peace.
He said the conduct of the election has left the state governor, Prof Soludo as a jinx breaker.
On ways to better future election, he said: “We recommend better strategic logistics management to forestall delays in commencement of polls.
“In future elections, there’s need to commence early voter education and citizen sensitization for improved voter turnout.”
He commended the high number of voters in some polling units, and recommended splitting of polling units to contain fewer number of voters not exceeding 500, for easy and swift management.
The ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) had during the Saturday election swept all the available positions.
