How We’ll Verify Ondo Election Results–Yiaga Africa

An NGO, Yiaga Africa, on Sunday said it would deploy the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology to verify results during the October 10 governorship election in Ondo State.

The Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Mr Samson Itodo, said in a statement in Abuja that the group would also deploy 646 observers under its “Watching The Vote (WTV)” project to monitor the election.

According to Itodo, PVT is an election day observation methodology that leverages on statistics and technology to observe the processes of voting, counting and tallying of results.

“Citizen observers are deployed to randomly sample polling units to collect data on the conduct of elections and official polling unit level results. With the results assembled from the sampled polling units, a citizen observer group can release projected estimates and verify the accuracy of results declared by the election management body. Using this methodology, observer reports are sent via SMS to a central database which enables WTV to analyse and share timely findings on the conduct of the election in near real-time”.

Itodo further said Yiaga Africa would deploy 600 stationary observers in pairs to a representative statistical sample of 300 polling units as well as 28 roving observers.

He added that 18 collation centre observers would be deployed to each of the 18 local government areas of the state.

Itodo said the deployment strategy would enable Yiaga Africa to provide timely and accurate information on the conduct of accreditation, voting and counting as well as to independently verify official results.

He also said the observers were trained in 47 centres spread across the 18 local government areas in the state.

Itodo said INEC, having conducted its first major off-circle election amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Edo, should ensure improvement in adherence to safety protocols in the election in Ondo State.

He added that in ensuring citizen observers adhere to COVID-19 safety guidelines, Yiaga Africa had provided facemasks for all its citizen observers to ensure access to polling units.