By Stella Omona
Th International Press Centre (IPC), Yiaga Africa and other stakeholders have called on the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agencies to ensure inclusive, fair and credible elections as the Nigerian electorate goes to the polls February 25 and March, 2023.
Already, INEC’s Director for Voter Education, Victor Aluko, has again assured Nigerians that all arrangements towards the successful conduct of the elections have been concluded saying the exercise will hold as scheduled.
Aluko gave this assurance on Wednesday at a Media/CSO Roundtable titled “2023 Elections: Avoiding Landmines, Overcoming Obstacles and Conducting Credible Elections” organized by IPC and Yiaga Africa funded by the European Union.
Some of the measures he stated included; “The commission is signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with actual vehicle owners, transport operators.
“If any voter goes to the polling unit before the date of election h or she can easily check if his or her name is there. Most of the polling units are in particular places well known and even if the name is not there, it will be in a nearby unit just about 10 metres away from where they used to vote.”
” We will be providing all accredited journalists with tags all over the country. A lot of people are hiding under the media to get accredited but we will not allow that. By February 18, the commission will commence daily briefing to provide necessary information .
“No secret, is going to be an open contest and conduct, We also have citizen contact centre where all our social media contacts are there. The commission has also come up with dedicated phone lines which we will announce soon through which citizens can easily reach us. Information sharing during this election will be top notch.
He stressed that; “the laws of Nigeria say you go to the polling unit with PVC and not slips or tract. The BVA is designed to authenticate the fingerprint or facials.”
IPC Executive Director , Lanre Arogundade said security agencies must respect the constitution.
“For the judiciary and the law enforcement agencies and security agencies, what we are saying is that their allegiance should be to the constitution of this country and the various laws we have put together to ensure credible elections because it will be too bad if such laws are set aside on the basis of any form of exigences, particularly for the security agencies, we look forward to adequate protection of journalists that will cover elections so that we do not have a repeat of molestations of journalists who despite being accredited by INEC were still harassed in different ways.
” This is very important and as journalists we should be above board despite the level of inflammatory statements made by candidates or political parties. We should be geared towards helping citizens to make informed choices. We don’t want the situation whereby the media will be blamed in anyway for any form of disruption in the electoral process.”
Executive Director, Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo said the roundtable was aimed at identifying and mitigating gaps in the preparation of INEC ahead of the
elections as wells as re-challenge key stakeholders to their responsibilities with their commitments
serving as a tool to deepen public confidence and facilitate more inclusive participation as the elections
draw nearer.
Jake Epelle expressed worry that any policy that does not have the interest of People Living with Disabilities would create apathy.
