The Independent National Electoral Commission, or INEC, has instructed observers slated for this month’s presidential, National Assembly, gubernatorial, and state assembly elections that their role is to merely monitor, observe, and report their findings and not to meddle with the elections.
The INEC asserted that it is the only body tasked with overseeing the elections and that all other support organizations, including local and internal observers, will only be present to provide the commission with reports.
On Thursday, Dr. Chukwuemeka Chukwu, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) for the state of Enugu, made the order while flagging off ActionAid’s Election Observers Training in Enugu.
Represented by the Head of Department for Election Political Party Monitoring, EPM, Mrs Ginika Uche Nwankwo, the REC told the forthcoming election observers that they have a code of conduct which they should follow and which excludes them from interference with any of the election workers such as the ad-hoc officers or the substantive INEC workers.
“The job of the election observers is different, when they come they should behave just like observers and then write reports of what they have seen or observed. There are international and domestic observers and these domestic observers are being trained so that they will know what is expected of them and how they are going to conduct themselves during the election,” she said.
Nwankwo disclosed that the commission has done a mock use of the BVAS machine in Enugu state, which she reported was fast and works perfectly well. She also stated that with the BVAS machine, it would be difficult to have a case of over-voting as was alleged in the 2022 Osun state gubernatorial election.
ActionAid Governance manager, Mr Celestine Odoh said that two days of training for election observers was being conducted for 650 accredited observers across the country as part of the organization’s effort to bring inclusiveness, transparency and accountability into the electoral process.
“Usually, the end product of this is the report that we generate at the end of it. The report will show the progress, the challenges and all that. So, we usually use that to engage INEC and other electoral and political stakeholders across the country. But even more strategic is that the observation offers the real-time intervention of the electoral management body.
“For instance we are going to deploy an App to the observers in the field for the first time, called ‘Eye Observer’, it’s an innovation and it has inbuilt features containing electoral guidelines which the observer will be using; and this App when deployed offers the observer real time report to us on what is happening in the field and as we are getting this information, they are being collated and processed.
“So where there is need for an immediate intervention of INEC or the security agencies, we call them immediately, we get that escalated. So it’s part of improving the electoral process through real time intervention and forming later discussions and that’s how the electoral act has helped,” Odoh explained.