• Friday, March 29, 2024
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CTA opens situation room, deploys 2,000 observers for election

CTA
The Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) has opened situation room to generally establish common trends towards gauging the level of compliance with the minimum international standard for credible elections at the Saturday polls.
At the opening of the situation room in Abuja on Friday, Faith Nwadishi, the executive director of CTA said it is deploying a total of 2,000 observers across Nigeria.
Nwadishi said the 2023 general elections is a defining moment for Nigeria and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) given the relative state of insecurity across the country.
She said the spate of attacks on INEC facilities in some parts of the country as well as the general state of insecurity in some other parts remains a major challenge to the conduct of the elections.
“Several innovations have been introduced into the 2023 General Elections. These include the deployment of the Bi-modal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), the electronic transmission of election results from the polling units direct to INEC’s portal, and INEC Result Viewing portal (IReV) among others.
“The CTA is deploying a total of 2,000 observers across Nigeria. To support our field observers, CTA has set up its Situation Room to follow up with field reports from observers to generally establish common trends towards gauging the level of compliance with minimum international standard for credible elections.
“In preparing for this election, the CTA conducted stakeholders’ meetings across the six geo-political zones, held several press conferences on different issues as they arose, observed the Mock Accreditation across the states, trained observers, Sensitization of the PWDs in the FCT.
“These are parts of CTA’s ongoing contributions towards a successful conduct of the 2023 general elections and the long term sustenance of democracy in Nigeria.
“While commending INEC’s performance so far, we enjoin INEC not to rest on their oars until a free, fair and credible election is delivered to the Nigerian people, she said.
Nwadishi called on the security agencies deployed for election duties to conduct themselves with utmost neutrality and professionalism and acknowledged the important role they play in the maintenance of law and order, safeguarding of election officials and materials as well as the electorates.
She also called on political parties and their agents to conduct themselves in accordance with the election guidelines and the rules of engagement at polling units and collation centres.
The CTA boss insisted that all forms of malpractices including vote buying and selling should be avoided and called on the electorate to remain vigilant, law abiding and peaceful in all their conduct before, during and after election.