By Our Correspondent<\/p>\n
Barely 24 hours to Osun governorxhip election on saturday,the Election Observation Group, Yiaga Africa, has raised concerns over the logistical implications of the last-minute inclusion of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Saturday\u2019s Osun State governorship election.<\/p>\n
Recall that the SDP candidate, Dr. Francis Olugbenga Ajala, and his running mate, Faseke Babajimi Oladipo inclusion followed a Federal High Court judgment directing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to place the party on the ballot.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a re-election press briefing the Chairman of the 2026 Osun Election Observation Mission, Yiaga Africa, Dr. Asmau Maikudi, said the compliance with the judgment required INEC to reprint ballot papers and result sheets, increasing the number of political parties participating in the election to 15.<\/p>\n
Maikudi also noted that the pressure on the deployment process could result in logistical errors, delayed arrival of materials at polling locations and late commencement of polls.<\/p>\n
\u201cYiaga Africa is concerned that such late judicial interventions create avoidable operational pressure and heighten the risk of delayed deployment, logistical errors and late commencement of polls. While compliance with court orders is obligatory, judicial decisions delivered at the eleventh hour can impose significant administrative costs on election management and potentially undermine public confidence in the process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Maikudi also urged INEC to resolve all outstanding technical issues with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to prevent disenfranchisement, delays and other operational disruptions arising from technical failures.<\/p>\n
She said “INEC\u2019s mock accreditation exercise exposed significant technical challenges that raise concerns about election-day readiness. Some BVAS devices temporarily failed to recognize voters\u2019 fingerprints, facial features and older PVC records. INEC attributed the facial verification failures to an excessively high compatibility threshold affecting older voter data, particularly records that had not been revalidated. If unresolved, these failures could disenfranchise eligible voters, generate tension at polling units and undermine confidence in the credibility and legitimacy of the election.”<\/p>\n
Maikudi further called for more consistent coordination within the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security (ICCES) to ensure proper security of polling officials deployed to Registration Area Centres ahead of election day.<\/p>\n
While calling on INEC to avoid complacency, anticipate predictable points of failure, and demonstrate readiness through performance, the she added “election-day credibility will depend on timely deployment, reliable technology, consistent application of the law and effective contingency planning.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Our Correspondent Barely 24 hours to Osun governorxhip election on saturday,the Election Observation Group, Yiaga Africa, has raised concerns over the logistical implications of the last-minute inclusion of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Saturday\u2019s Osun State governorship election. Recall that the SDP candidate, Dr. Francis Olugbenga Ajala, and his running mate, Faseke Babajimi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16618,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16616\/revisions\/16618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}