By
Gloria Abutu
The 2023 Governorship and House of Assembly election in Yola, the Adamawa state capital was generally characterized by low turnout of voters.
Radio Nigeria visited Nasarawo, Capital school, Jambutu, Rumde, Viniklang, Doubeli, and Yelwa to monitor the election.
INEC adhoc staff, security personnel, sensitive and non sensitive election materials all arrived early to the polling units.
The election started at 8:30 am at most polling units visited and as at 3:00 pm, sorting and counting of votes had commenced.
At all the polling units visited, the Presiding Officers noted that the turn out of voters was considerably poor, compared to the Presidential and National Assembly election.
One of the Presiding Officers at Capital school, Yola Odoh Jibrin said out of 750 registered voters, only 175 participated in the election.
The P.O.s promised that copies of the election result will be issued to party agents and immediately transmitted to INEC result viewing portal, IREV.
The election was however peaceful in all the areas visited except for pockets of skirmishes among the electorates in some polling units, but immediately quelled by the intervention of security personnel.
There was alleged vote buying by some party agents at polling unit 022, Anguwan Kabawa in Viniklang during the election.
According to one of the voters, Mohammed Jalo, he saw people being given money after casting their ballot and confirming that they voted for a particular political party.
All the respondents who interacted with Radio Nigeria expressed hope that the electoral process will be credible and commended INEC for the significant improvement in the BVAS as according to them, there was no record of challenges with the use of the machine.
Some security personnel who spoke on condition of anonymity pointed out that there was no case of electoral violence, saying the electorates conducted themselves in a peaceful manner.
Personnel of the Nigeria Police Force, National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency NDLEA, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, Nigeria Customs Service among other security agencies were deployed across polling units to forestall breakdown of law and order.
