While many polling units successfully conducted the voting process during the Edo State governorship election on Saturday, at least 22 others recorded cancelled or no voting procedure.

Checks through the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) result viewing portal show that the factors responsible for this range from overvoting to emergency, disruption and inability to deploy electoral officers and materials.

Through a random selection process, FIJ examined about 2,000 of the 4,460 results on the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal and found these 22 polling units across different local government areas in the state.

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ANALYSIS

The data shows that declared emergency/disruption and overvoting account for the major reasons for cancelled and no election in these 22 polling units.

Nine polling units in Ovia South West, Oredo, Akoko Edo, Etsako Central and Egor local government areas experienced emergency situations and disruptions.

Another nine polling units in Esan South East, Owan East, Iguben, Ovia South West, Esan West, Akoko Edo, Etsako East, and Orhionmwon recorded overvoting. Four polling units in Egor, Orhionmwon and Akoko Edo could not vote because of INEC’s inability to deploy officers and materials there.

Declared emergency/disruption and overvoting account for approximately 40.91% each while the inability to deploy men and materials represents 18.18%.

To put this in perspective, 10,768 residents of these areas were registered voters. If a quarter of these registered voters, considering the low figure of those who collected their Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), had come out to exercise their rights on Saturday, their votes would either have not counted or they would not have been able to vote.

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This data draws attention to the need for INEC to double its efforts in countering overvoting, emergencies and election disruption.

Meanwhile, an alarming rate of vote buying was recorded in the Edo election.

FIJ reported that a coalition of civil society organisations estimated that the price of votes varied between N5,000 and N10,000 per voter across many polling units in the State. Some of the voters were influenced by food items.