One of the election monitors officially accredited by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to observe the 2019 general elections in the country has issued a pre-election press statement in Abuja in connection with killings in Kaduna.
Addressing the press, the National Coordinator for Election Monitor in Nigeria, Mr. Abiodun Ajijola condemned the deaths of 122 people, the 256 Nigerians injured and the various 145 incidences of pre-election violence experienced in the run up to the 2019 Nigerian General Elections in the country.
Reeling out his findings, Mr. Abiodun Ajijola stated that Election Monitor tenaciously tracked the incidences of violence from the 18th of August, 2018; the date for the official notice given for the polls to commence to identify hotspots and areas of concern going into the 2019 General Elections. He revealed that the tracking stopped on the 14th February, 2019 just 48 hours to the Presidential and National Assembly elections.
He noted that the incidences tracked were all the issues relating to the election which ranged from clashes between political parties, deaths at rallies, politically motivated murders, vandalization of billboards, properties and vehicles, shootings and a host of others.
According to him “During the tracking period, a total of 122 deaths, 256 people injured in 145 unique incidences were tracked. These cut across almost every state of the federation with some regions clearly experiencing higher levels of pre-election violence than others”.
The Election Monitor’s National Coordinator; Mr. Abiodun Ajijola advised the Security Agencies and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ensure that the Nigerian security forces reinforce and flush out armed bandits and operations of terrorists within Nigerian borders as much as possible to ensure that voters are not disenfranchised in locations experiencing these challenges.
He also enjoined security personnel and indeed all security chiefs to remember that they must remain neutral and ensure strict allegiance to Nigeria and not any personal, private or partisan interest.
Ajijola urged Nigerian citizens not to be involved in boycotting the elections in any part of the country and advised those spreading such messages across the country to desist from such act. He stated that the calls by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) for the Nigerian voters to boycott the elections must be ignored by all Nigerians and neutralized.
Election Monitor therefore commended the President, Muhammadu Buhari for re-assuring international observers in the country of their security during his presidential address on February 14, 2019.
Election Monitor, however, urged the international observers to ensure they restrict their activities to observation as provided for by the global standards for election observation and avoid interfering in the affairs of the country which would likely adversely affect the polity.
Ajijola emphasised on the need to critically watch the security situation after polls close till final announcement of results even after restriction of movement is relaxed. He noted this step as most critical in the first 24 hours after polls close.
“Security agents should not be caught off guard. This is important because any violence will most likely be targeted at preventing the final release of the election results so as to prevent the elections from being concluded peacefully. INEC should ensure to speed up collation as much as possible and security agencies have to be on full alert until final results are declared.
“Security agencies should flood the airwaves and the social media with toll lines for contacting them throughout Election Day while the political parties that decide to develop their own internal collations systems should not announce their findings until after INEC has declared the entire results. It is also important that any system that does not perform a 100% collation mapping of the entire 119,973 polling units would always have a margin of error which cannot be guaranteed. For this reason, political parties who are tracking results in fewer locations than the entire polling units in the country have to accept the limitations of their systems no matter how robust so as not to create crises in the country by releasing different sets of results. Political parties should exercise maximum caution in this area and stakeholders must also exercise caution when comparing figures which may be released by the various political parties.
“Security personnel should ensure that they arrive on time at polling units and are available on time to escort materials to various locations which will engender more timely elections. The security agencies must do everything in their capacity to prevent electoral violence. There was massive destruction of ballots and ballot boxes just as accreditation and voting were about to end during the 2016 Bayelsa Governorship Rerun election. For this reason, the security agents have to be prepared for detractors who have no interest in a conclusive process”.
Packaged by Emmanuel Adeniran
