Politics
YOUTH Initiative for Advocacy, Growth And Advancement (YIAGA) Africa, a non-governmental organisation, says that it will engage security agencies and traditional rulers to ensure a credible and peaceful governorship elections in Kogi and Bayelsa on Nov.16.
Mr Samson Itodo, Executive Director, YIAGA Africa, said this in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday.
According to him, as the elections are fast approaching it is becoming more imperative to advocate peaceful and credible elections in both states.
Itodo said that there was need for election stakeholders to put mechanisms in place for participatory credible and peaceful elections in the two 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.
“This is in a bid to share its election observation deployment plan, seek stakeholder’s buy-in and explore areas of collaboration as well as provide information on the pre-election observation deployment for both states,’’ he said.
He said that the board and management of WTV had already met with the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) and other officials of the commission in Bayelsa.
The Executive Director said that the team was glad that the REC and other officials were receptive to the plan to deploy Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) election observation which remained 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 Nov.16 governorship election in the state.’’
Itodo said that YIAGA also visited the Commissioner of Police and the Commandant of Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa to discuss peace.
He said that the visit to the security agencies would enable them to analyse and share early warning signals against security threats for immediate response ahead of the elections.
He also said that while informed citizen’s participation was vital to a credible election, education of voters remained the joint responsibility of all stakeholders.
“Other stakeholders including religious and traditional leaders can play huge roles as influencers to their followers in preaching the credible and peaceful polls,’’ he said.
Itodo said that the team also successfully engaged head of the state’s Traditional Rulers Council, Pa Alfred Papapreye Diette-Spiff.
He said that the team also met with the Ijaw Elders Forum who declared readiness to work for credible election as it has already begun sensitisation of the citizens to ensuring violence-free elections.
He said that the elders promised to monitor negative utterances and actions of political actors and follow-up to ensure they were prosecuted.
Itodo said that the team also met with representatives of major political parties in Bayelsa, including the chairman and members of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC).
He disclosed that they discussed the need to conduct transparent and democratic political party primaries and shared YIAGA Africa plans to observe political party primaries in a bid to provide recommendations.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that `WatchingTheVote’ is a comprehensive observation mechanism that deploys the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) to observe the electoral process, political party primaries, pre-election environment and the Election Day observation. (NAN)
– Aug. 28, 2019 @ 14:49 GMT |
Tags: Bayelsa Kogi: YIAGA engages INEC other stakeholders on peaceful elections
