As the Ekiti State Governorship Poll takes place on Saturday (today), the CLEEN Foundation, an NGO, has warned the media against biased and selective reporting before, during, and after the election.
Mrs Ruth Olofin, the foundation’s Acting Executive Director, warned at a news conference on Friday that social media misuse, partisanship, favoritism, partiality, and press sensationalism might sabotage the election.
The press briefing was centered on the group’s Election Security Threat Assessment (ESTA) conducted ahead of the election.
“Other electoral risk factors identified in our security threat assessment include exclusion of ethnic groups at 68.1 per cent and failure to prosecute electoral offenders 68.1 per cent, abuse of social media 68 per cent and underage voting 68 per cent,” she said.
“Problems associated with registration and accreditation devices 67.1% and partisanship, favouritism, partiality and sensationalism of the press 67.1%, activities of immigrants and unregistered voters 65.7%.
“Conduct of party agents 64.4%, failure of regulatory bodies to enforce media regulations 63.3%, problems associated with continuous voter registration 63%, citizens disaffection with government 62.8%, lack of synergy among security agents 62.2%.
“Activities of religious extremists, cultists, armed groups and ritualists 62.1%, the partial or impartiality of the judiciary 61.8%, poor synergy between INEC and security agents 61.2% and miscarriage of justice 61.1%.
“All these factors carried an aggregate score of between 60% and 69%,” she added.
Olofin advised the media and other agents to conduct themselves with the utmost professionalism, avoiding any sort of compromise that could jeopardize the democratic process.
She said that other findings from the ESTA indicates high expectations of peaceful elections in 13 of the 16 LGAs.
She did observe, however, that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had put in place measures to address logistics and operational issues that had arisen in previous elections, and that the distribution of non-sensitive materials had begun.
She praised the INEC for taking critical recommendations from stakeholders into account, such as conducting mock accreditation in selected local government areas to test the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System’s functioning (BVAS).
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