By Marcus Ikechukwu
Peering Advocacy and Advancement Center (PAACA), an election monitoring group, has said the supplementary elections in Sokoto state were characterised by vote buying in some of the polling units visited.
Ezenwa Nwagwu, Executive Director, PAACA in a statement released on Sunday, detailing their findings and observations on the Sokoto supplementary poll, noted that security agents deployed to most of the units feigned ignorance while the vote trading held unabated.
“While we commend the deployment of security personnel across most of the polling units that we observed, PAACA and partners are however disturbed about the reports of the ineffectiveness of some security personnel to discharge their duties, especially in locations where vote trading became the order of the day, vote buying was seen to be done in the open with no attempts by the security operatives to apprehend the perpetrators,” the report stated.
Commenting on the general conduct of the election in Sokoto specifically, PAACA noted that polling officials deployed early across most of the polling units observed, with officials arriving at 7:30 am in 100 of the observed polling units.
According to the election observer group, “On Saturday, April 15, 2023 citizens in Sokoto State went to the polls to exercise their democratic rights of electing their representatives in locations where the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared some elections as inconclusive and ordered supplementary elections in the constituencies affected.
“Interestingly, the National Assembly elections for three Senatorial Districts in Sokoto State were ordered inconclusive. These elections were conducted in 440 polling units with a combined 262,704 registered voters and 250,142 PVCs collected. These polling units were spread across the 23 LGAs of the states.
“The Peering Advocacy and Advancement Center (PAACA) in collaboration with other accredited observer groups trained and deployed over 122 stationary, independent non-partisan observers across the polling units in Sokoto South Senatorial District, and over 20 roving observers in the other senatorial districts”.
It said in 123 of the polling units observed where polling officials had arrived accreditation and voting began by 9:30 am.
