ECOWAS monitors indict Akwa Ibom, Delta

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Observer Mission in last Saturday's presidential election at the weekend indicted Akwa Ibom and Delta States for barring its officials from performing their functions in their domains.

Head of the mission and erstwhile head of the Interim National Government in Liberia, Amos Sawyer, said in the team's preliminary report that though the overall conduct of the election met the criteria of free, transparent and credible election and therefore generally acceptable, the monitors were denied access to the polling stations in most South South states.

This was part of the challenges the mission said it encountered during the exercise, which it called for appropriate measures to be taken by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to check before the next phase of elections.

Other shortcomings identified during the elections, the Mission said, included use of incomplete voters registers in some polling stations; differences in the interpretation by INEC officials of accreditation and voting procedures; slow rate of voting in some polling stations due to imbalance in the ratio of voters to electoral officials.

"Notwithstanding these shortcomings, the organisation of the election can be considered as generally acceptable. Having found no major incidents or irregularities, the ECOWAS Observation Mission is persuaded that the Presidential election of April 16, 2011 meets the criteria of being free and transparent," the report said.

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woohoo!!! I was beginning to wonder how long it would take for something on that to come up!

Another bunch of clueless ECOWAS observers who claimed they were denied access to observe yet turn in a report that says election met the criteria for free and credible elections! This one na mumu play catcher!

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