EU expresses satisfaction with presidential poll

saturday’s presidential election is a sign of hope for national and democratic development in Nigeria, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) has said.

The mission’s chief observer, Alojz Peterle, stated this while observing the election process at a polling unit in Wuse Zone 1, in Abuja yesterday.

“It is my pleasure to report to you on this morning observation of 141 observers deployed to all Nigerian states. It is important that our observer’s overall rating is even better than one week ago, because many elements we observe are better, the poling units opened on time. Our observers observed that only few cases of missing election materials, we observed less disorder and first of all very patient voters.

“We think that it is important that this peaceful atmosphere, we say low level of violence, violence was not observed, it is expected that this is maintained this afternoon till evening even till night if necessary. The turnout is much higher today, but despite that the atmosphere is generally calm and peaceful.

“I also want to report one of my personal observations today, I saw at several polling units that INEC staffs were particularly attentive to the pregnant women, they had priority; I consider these as a high culture, I will like to congratulate the people for the special attention to the pregnant women,” Peterle said.

When asked to mention the places where election materials were missing, he said he was not there personally and that the details of their findings would be in the final report.

On names missing from the register, Peterle said in some cases there was no additional voters list, but in some ward, it seemed that INEC has undertaken some efforts to remove the problem to give the voters chance to participate in the election, but cannot say how many cases now.

“The most important of his observation is the higher rating observed today in comparison to last Saturday, despite the higher turnout, for me this is the basis for hope that in this spirit, elections will be done properly,” he said.

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