Electoral Hub tasks INEC on early arrival, priority voting

The Electoral Hub on Friday tasked the INEC on early commencement of polls and priority voting during the Governorship and House of Assembly elections.

Director, The Electoral Hub, Princess Hamman-Obels, made the call in a statement in Abuja .

Hamman-Obels also called on all electoral stakeholders and citizens to work together to safeguard the integrity of the election and ensure the sanctity of the process.

She said that the call was necessary due to the issues arising from the conduct of the Presidential and National Assembly elections of Feb. 25.

“The Electoral Hub is very concerned over attacks on women in the election in various forms such as physical harm, intimidation, vote suppression, lack of adherence to priority voting, bullying and violent attacks.

“These actions further deepened the exclusion of women in the electoral process.”

Hamman-Obels called on the government and security agencies to ensure that women had a conducive environment to cast their votes as the right to vote was also human right.

She called on INEC to be more proactive and improve on its activities for the upcoming elections and the ad hoc staff should be better sensitised and trained.

Hamman-Obels called on security agencies to be more professional in carrying out their roles.

She also called for adequate security presence in all polling units as this would help curb voter suppression and intimidation, violence and protect the electoral personnel and materials from hoodlums.

She tasked INEC on excellent functionality of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and early upload to IReV.

“We expect high turnout for the governorship and state assembly elections given their importance to citizens as lower and closer levels of governance. ”

Hamman-Obels urged Nigerians to come out en masse to exercise their civic rights responsibly .

She urged youths not to allow themselves to be used by politicians to cause violence and disrupt the elections.

She said The Electoral Hub remained committed to promoting electoral knowledge, accountability and integrity .

“Our Election Observation Centre will be actively documenting and analysing conduct and misconduct of the election from our observers deployed across the country, media and citizen observers,” she said.