Rights Monitoring Group (RMG), a coalition of 45 civil society
organisations, has concluded arrangements with two leading insurance
companies to provide adequate insurance policy cover for all observers
of the group during the forthcoming general elections.
The organisation plans to deploy 13,000 observers to monitor the poll.
The National Coordinator of the group, Mr. Olufemi Aduwo, said members
would give a good account of themselves all through the period of the
election.
RMG, along with 87 local and foreign organisations and foreign
missions, are accredited by the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) to observe the general elections.
It will be recalled that the group started election monitoring in
2003, and it has also monitored elections beyond the shores of
Nigeria.
Aduwo was a member of INEC delegation that observed the United
States, Ghanaian and the United Kingdom general elections in 2008,
2009 and 2010, respectively. He also served as a member of INEC
Election Monitoring Board for Anambra State Governorship election in
2009 .
He was appointed by the INEC chairman, Prof Attahiru Jega, in 2011 to
observe the collation of presidential election results.
While speaking on the preparation for the forthcoming election, Aduwo
said “our mission during the exercise is to assess all aspects of the
electoral processes, the constitutional and legal framework. Each
observer would limit his observations during the election to his
specific area of coverage in order to ensure that the reports the
observers would be filing after the election would be detailed and
faultless”.
He also appealed to other accredited observers to distinguish among
complaints, rumours, accusations and facts.
“Only facts that they witnessed or verified on the field should be
used as the basis of their reports. Our main objective as stakeholder
in the electoral management should be how to entrenche democracy
through free and fair election and enhancement of public confidence
in the electoral process, to deter fraud, to strengthen respect for
human rights, and to contribute to the electoral resolution of
conflict”, he said.
The activist, who is a returnee of World Bank/IMF Boards of Governors
meetings expressed gratitude to the Centre on Convention for
Democratic Integrity (CCDI) and World Bank Good Governance Programme
for financial support and for extending a hand of fellowship to the
group in the areas of re-training and rendering assistance to observe
the election.
He appealed to the politicians to have confidence in the Prof.
Jega-led INEC , saying “the Commission needs the cooperation of
political parties and not condemnation by politicians”.
He stated that he believed that Jega would not compromise the
integrity of the electoral process.
“As INEC chairman, Jega cannot rig any election when the results
would be announced at polling units, the political parties must be
able to have credible and discerning people as polling agents instead
of miscreants”, he charged.
He added that “the politicians who engage under-aged to vote must be
prosecuted, the issue of child voters has become a recurring issue in
the northern part of the country and all the political parties are
beneficiary of this electoral fraud over the years. Nigeria’s
potential for greatness is not in doubt and it is even more gratifying
that we all as citizens agree that with the right efforts, the country
can activate its potential.”
“It starts with observing basic civic duties, not selling your votes,
jettisoning electoral malpractices, being tolerant of people of
different political persuasion and shunning violence. All these
seemingly little things will go a long way in making Nigeria a better
place”.
Tags: femi aduwo, jonathan, nigera 2015 elections, osibajo, presidential elections, professor jega
