By Jethro Ibileke
As residents file out on Saturday 16 November 2024 to exercise their franchise in the Ondo State governorship election, Kimpact Development Initiative (KDI), an election monitoring civil society Organisation, has predicted a free fair and credible election.
The Executive Director of KDI, Bukola Idowu, who stated this on Friday, predicted that the election would be one of the best elections conducted in recent times in Nigeria.
He based his optimism on the level of preparation by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in terms of training for its ad hoc staff and the logistics it has put in place.
Idowu said, “Our expectation at KDI is that this election is likely going to be the best in recent times. In terms of planning, the planning has been top-notch; the preparation has been top-notch, and every other thing has been top-notch.
“The ad-hoc staff of INEC were trained for 13 weeks. And putting into consideration the level of preparation we have seen so far, we don’t expect any challenge in the logistics because materials have been moved to Registration Area Centres (RAC) since yesterday (Thursday).”
He added: “According to the State INEC REC, the fund and other logistics needed have been all provided, so as we go out to observe we will be looking at early commencement of vote.”
Idowu however warned that should anything go wrong along the way in terms of logistics on the day of the election, it would be nothing, but sabotage.
The KDI director, who decried the poor level of preparation by some of the participating political parties, revealed that out of the 17 political parties contesting the election, only the PDP deployed 100 percent agents across polling units, while the APC fielded 99 percent, and three political parties did not have agents at any polling units at all.