Voting commenced smoothly across much of Onitsha North Local Government Area in the ongoing Anambra State governorship election, though some polling units experienced technical hitches with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) on Saturday morning.
According to early field reports, including observations from election monitors with Yiaga Africa, most INEC officials arrived on time and began the process of accrediting voters and conducting the polls without major disruptions.
Despite these technical challenges, Yiaga Africa described the election atmosphere as largely calm and orderly.
“We’ve not seen any altercations, and we noticed the INEC officials who are present in most of the polling units," said Jennifer Dagwut, Yiaga Africa’s Media and Communications Officer.
"They were relatively on time. However, we’ve noticed a few BVAS malfunctioning in a number of polling units here in Onitsha North."
Election observers described security presence as strong and visible, with officers stationed around polling centres to ensure safety and respond quickly to any incidents.
However, Dagwut said monitors observed a few isolated incidents of vote buying, which she described as a recurring concern in Nigerian elections.
“We’ve noticed still a few cases of vote buying as well, as with each election,” she said, adding that political actors appear to be adopting new tactics and technologies for such practices.
“There are newer ways of doing the same thing — newer technologies that we find political parties are deploying intelligently through their people,” she added.
As voting continued, election observers urged citizens to remain peaceful and patient while INEC addressed the reported BVAS malfunctions.
