Ismaeel Uthman
A renowned election monitoring group, Yiaga Africa, has called on media practitioners in the State of Osun to be active participants in the process of achieving smooth and credible electoral processes that will guarantee free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria.
This is just as Yiaga Africa, called for a free, fair, credible and transparent July 16 gubernatorial election in the state, noting that pre-election electoral activities play vital roles in the conduct and outcome of every election.
A board member of the group, Mr Ezenwa Nwagwu, made the call during a Watch The Vote(WTV) Media Dialogue Round Table Discussion for print and broadcast journalists in Osun, yesterday, in Osogbo.
According to Nwagwu, Yiaga would be deploying 560 election observers to monitor pre and post election processes in all the 30 local government areas of the state,
He said the group, through its WTV, would deploy observers in pairs to a representative random sample of 250 polling units in all the local government areas.
Nwagwu said Yiaga would also be using Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT), an advanced technology that leverages statistics and technology for the observation of the process of voting, counting and tallying of election results.
“Five hundred WTV polling units observers would be deployed to observe the accreditation, voting and counting processes on election day”, he said.
He added that the group would also be deploying 32 trained long-term observers to monitor pre-election activities across the state.
The election analyst said Yiaga would also deployed additional 32 observers to monitor result collation process at the local government result collation centres on the election day.
Nwagu urged all the stakeholders that will be participating in the election to come together to ensure that the poll is peaceful, inclusive, transparent, credible and fair, saying what the group is after is a credible poll that everyone would be proud of.
“In spite all the challenges Nigeria’s democratic system is facing, it is still the best form of government and must be protected”, he said.
In his technical presentation, the Elections Manager of the group, Paul James, said that PVT would allow the group to present an accurate and comprehensive assessment of the election processes.
James said PVT would also help the group to detect, expose and deter fraud during the election and also remove uncertainty in verifying election results.
Speaking during the opening remarks, the Chairman of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Osun Council, Comrade Wasiu Ajadosu said the country’s democratic and electoral processes need to be given special attention by the media and civil society groups for desired development.
According to Ajadosu, both the media and the civil societies have relaxed since they won the battle for the return of democracy in 1999, urging them to gear up to the new cause of sustaining and developing the hard earned democracy.
