The November 16 th Governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states are fast approaching and it is becoming more imperative to advocate f...
The November 16th
Governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states are fast approaching and it
is becoming more imperative to advocate for peaceful and credible elections in
both states. There is need for election stakeholders to put mechanisms in place
to ensure a participatory credible and peaceful elections in the states.
As the largest
citizen movement committed to credible elections in Nigeria, YIAGA AFRICA’s Watching
The Vote (WTV) has commenced advocacy visits to election stakeholders in both
Bayelsa and Kogi states. This is in a bid to share our election observation
deployment plan, seek stakeholder buy-in and explore areas of collaboration as
well as provide information on the pre-election observation deployment for
Bayelsa and Kogi.
The Board and
Management of WTV met with the Independent National Electoral Commission’s
(INEC) Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Bayelsa State, Pastor Monday
Udoh Tom and other officials of the commission in the state. The team is glad
that the REC and the elections team are receptive to our plan to deploy
Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) election observation, which remains the gold
standard for election observation across the world. The REC also promised to
take stakeholders along while providing information on the commission’s
activities ahead of the November 16th Governorship election in the
state.
Similarly, there
are no credible elections without peace, and this makes our advocacy visit to the
Commissioner of Police and the Commandant of National Security and Civil Defence
Corps in Bayelsa state very vital at this crucial point in time. The visit to
security agency enabled us analyze and share early warning systems against security
threats for immediate response ahead of the elections.
While informed
citizen participation is vital to a credible election, we believe that not only
the electoral commission has a role to play in educating voters; other
stakeholders including religious and traditional leaders can play huge roles as
influencers to their followers in preaching the credible and peaceful polls. In
this vein, the team successfully engaged head of Traditional Rulers Council, Pa
Alfred Papapreye Diette-Spiff who expressed his delight, while urging the team
to swing into action, report any wrong doings to the appropriate authority and
help achieve a credible process.
The team also met
with the Ijaw Elders Forum who declared readiness to work for credible election
as it has already commenced sensitization of the citizens to ensure
violence-free elections. In their words, “ we will monitor negative utterances
and actions of political actors and follow-up to ensure they are prosecuted.
Thus we will be glad to receive credible information from your violence
monitoring system, so that we can hold culprits accountable”.
Finally, we met
with representatives of major political parties in Bayelsa state including
Chairman and members of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC). During the
meeting with the political parties, we discussed the importance of conducting
transparent and democratic political party primaries. YIAGA AFRICA also shared
its plan to observe political party primaries in a bid to provide
recommendations.
#WatchingTheVote is a comprehensive observation of the electoral process,
which includes the observation of the political party primaries, pre-election
environment in all Local government areas and the election day observation
which deploys the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT). These will be adopted for the
observation of the 2019 Bayelsa State Governorship Election.
Signed,
-Samson Itodo
Executive Director, YIAGA AFRICA
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