The African Union election observation mission (AUEOM) has published its preliminary report on the presidential and National Assembly elections that were conducted in Nigeria last Saturday.

The mission, in its report released on Monday, expressed concern over the delay in commencement of voting in 83% of the polling units it monitored.

“The average delay was over an hour. In some cases, they opened as late as 11:00 am. This was largely due to the late arrival of polling officials and materials and the slow set-up of the polling units,” the statement reads.

The mission, however, called for a review of the “electoral logistics operations strategy to ensure timely deployment of electoral material and personnel and sufficient capacity building”.

The mission also faulted the unbalanced allocation of voters per polling unit, adding that the disparity in the spread of the electorate strained electoral officials.

The AUEOM also commended INEC over the deployment of the bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), but added that there was a limited number of devices that affected the smooth conduct of the process.

In its recommendation, the AUEOM advised the regulation of the number of BVAS machines “deployed at each polling unit to match the allocation of voters per unit”.