By Steven Enatu
DOKOLO
The Electoral Commission has declared the Uganda People’s Congress Party candidate Sarah Aguti Nyankori as the new Woman representative for Dokolo District.
Aguti won the race with 23044 votes. Nearest contender is Janet Rose Adongo the NRM candidate with 14001 votes, Dr.Rose Mary Austin Alwoc Ogwal the FDC candidate got 8168, Ageno Harriet of NUP 727, Esthee Akullo Obot independent 790, and Arao Rebecca 439.
The Dokolo District woman representative seat fell vacant following the demise of Cecillia Atim Ogwal on January 18,2024.She died of cancer related illness in India.
Dokolo District has a total of 484 villages ,71 parishes with 173 polling stations where the voting exercise were conducted from according to the Uganda Electoral Commission.
Total number of registered voters in Dokolo District were 95,683 out of this 49,842 (51.2)%are female,45,811(47.88)% are male
The results were announced by the retuning officer Erikwaine Ngobi surprisingly, no NRM member or even a candidate was available at the tally center. This could signal that NRM had conceded a defeat early.
Low turn up at polling stations.
As Dokolo By-elections commenced today, the ongoing elections was marred by low voters turnout.
Out of the 173 polling stations in the District, by 10am in the Morning, only about a quarter of the voters at more than 15 polling stations visited by our reporter had cast their votes.
For instance in Dokolo Progressive polling station where Dr Rosemary Alwoc, the late Cecilia Atim Ogwal’s daughter had cast her votes, only 62 people out of 309 registered voters had cast their votes by 1pm
Mr Bonny Okello, a presiding officer at Adogmon-mio polling station, Dokolo Town Council Southern ward said” We have a total number of voters about 541 and so far about 180 have so far voted ,”Mr Okello said.
“But the voting is going on well.By 7:30 am exercise had already kicked off,”he added.
Okello said the voting exercise was delayed abit because of the verification of voters’ names as directed by the Electoral Commission.
“So about 30 minutes was wasted because you need to verify thoroughly ,”he added.
Richard Okello, the presiding officer of Dokolo Primary school in Dokolo District said”As per my station I have 672 voters which are expected to vote today for this By-elections ,”he said.
By 12:00pm, at Dokolo Primary school in Dokolo District, out of the 672 registered voters, only 122 had cast their votes.
He however said the turn up of our voters is very good but the problem they encountered at the very beginning was that the machine was faulty.
“Our machine failed us and we had to call for help from the electoral commission officials which was then rectified through replacements of new ones. We are now very okay and the situation is calm,” he added.
Security deployment
Whereas many had anticipated heavy security deployment at most of the polling stations, the situation was however different with a few deployments of about only one or two police officers attached to each of the polling stations ,with no any major incidents as the voting kicked off.
While giving his speech the EC Chairperson Justice Simon Byabakam commended the people of Dokolo for being an example that Uganda can have free and fair peaceful election.
