Election Observation Report: Ondo Gubernatorial Election, 2024

Abstract

Just as it has been participating in the general and off-cycle elections including the Ondo gubernatorial election, the National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS) also conducted a comprehensive observation on the November 16th, 2024 Ondo State gubernatorial elections. The Institute, in line with its mandate of strengthening democratic institutions in Nigeria, and pursuant to Section 2 (i) of the NILDS Amendment Act 2017, participates in election process in Nigeria as a Domestic Observer Institution. Unlike before, this election observations centred on the performance and relative challenges of the continuous technological innovations especially the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS). As an accredited domestic observer by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), NILDS mobilised and deployed a total of twenty-eight (28) trained election observers to Ondo State to observe the election. Atleast, one observer man a local government in the state with its State Coordinator – Dr. Adewale Aderemi and his team active participation on the INEC Situa- tion Room and State Collation Centre. These observers provided real-time updates to a central coordinating office, and were guided by a checklist provided by INEC, and the other developed by NILDS for observing the performance or otherwise of the BVAS. The Ondo state 2024 gubernatorial elections saw the lowest turnout of voters participating in the exercise with data showing 508,963 (24.8%) votes cast out of 2,053,061 people who registered to vote during the election. A very sharp decline from 2020 elections that recorded 591,193 (32%) votes cast out of 1,812,634, signifying a continuous voter apathy. NILDS observers noted that the BVAS generally performed well, enhancing transparency in voter accreditation and result transmission. Most of the BVAS were noted recorded high acceptance of rate of the fingerprint modules with minimal number of voters accredited through the use of facial recognition. However, there are feasible technical challenges resulted to a few number of rejection by both fingerprint and facial recognition. Meanwhile, the observation highlighted critical issues such as widespread vote-buying, voter manipulation, and voters’ suppression, signaling a need for stronger enforcement of electoral laws. Despite these challenges, NILDS reported a largely peaceful election environment, with adequate security in most polling units.