Anambra 2025: Observer Group Commends INEC For Prioritising Elderly And Persons With Disabilities
BY GLORY UGOBA
THE Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) has commended the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for giving special attention to the elderly, pregnant women, and persons with disabilities (PWDs) during Saturday’s Anambra governorship election.
The CTA’s Election Experts Team Lead, Prof. Alex Asigbo, made the commendation on Saturday in Awka while presenting the group’s preliminary findings after monitoring the election across the 21 local government areas of the state.
According to Asigbo, CTA observers confirmed that the ruling All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) deployed agents to all polling units, while the All Progressives Congress (APC) achieved 93.8 per cent deployment and the Labour Party just 37 per cent.
“Many political parties failed to deploy agents to several polling units, leaving the process largely unmonitored,” Asigbo said.
He noted that the absence of party agents at polling stations created gaps in transparency and revealed a deeper issue — a lack of commitment among political actors to promote credible electoral processes.
Late Arrival of Election Materials
CTA also observed that INEC officials and materials arrived late at many polling units, leading to delayed commencement of voting.
The group reported that 68 per cent of polling units opened between 8:25 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., while another 31 per cent started between 8:30 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.
Asigbo said several vehicles hired by INEC failed to return for subsequent rounds of deployment after dropping off officials, worsening the delays.
BVAS Performance and Voter Turnout
The CTA, however, praised INEC for ensuring that pregnant women, nursing mothers, PWDs, and the elderly were given priority at polling stations, in line with electoral guidelines.
He said that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) functioned effectively in over 80 per cent of polling units, except for a few cases where some voters could not be accredited or found their names missing from the register.
Despite this, Asigbo said INEC still needed to improve its logistics management, which remains a persistent challenge, adding that voter apathy and security concerns contributed to the low turnout recorded in the election.
Call for Electoral Reforms and Voter Education
The CTA expressed concern about what it described as the premature conclusion of voting and early announcement of results in some polling units.
“Some ad hoc staff closed polls and announced results as early as 2:19 p.m., against the INEC stipulated time of 2:30 p.m., which may have disenfranchised eligible voters,” Asigbo stated.
As of 4:48 p.m., the group said 3,861 results had been uploaded to the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV), representing 67 per cent of total polling units.
CTA urged Nigerians to take civic participation more seriously and called on INEC and political parties to invest in sustained voter education to strengthen democracy.
“We commend the citizens of Anambra for their peaceful conduct and adherence to voting guidelines. However, political parties and their candidates played a limited role in strengthening the process,” Asigbo added.
