YIAGA AFRICA, a non- governmental organisation (NGO) at the weekend unveiled National Launch of Parallel Vote Tabulation Mission ahead of the 2019 general Elections.
The group during launch called on politicians to commit themselves to credible polls, by curbing their desperation ahead of the 2019 elections.
The Board Chair, YIAGA AFRICA, “Watching The Vote Working Group’’ Dr Hassaini Abdu made the call at the National Launch of Parallel Vote Tabulation Mission former the 2019 general Elections.
He explained that the parallel Vote Tabulation is an election observation methodology that is typically based on a representative random sample, of polling stations employed for independent verification of election results.
According to Abdu, the Watching The Vote initiative is a parallel tabular mission, which is jointly held by YIAGA AFRICA and National Democratic Institute (NDI), to monitor elections through deployment of technology in the 774 local government areas.
He said that the launch of the method was a declaration of YIAGA AFRICA’s readiness to support every stakeholder in the 2019 elections, in order to get the required result needed for a credible election.
“The primary commitment is to deepen accountability and enhance the credibility of elections which is the beginning of the democracy journey.
“This is because if we don’t get our elections right, we cannot actually claim it is a democracy because that is why the leadership emerge, so the quality of our leaders is determined by the quality of our elections.
“Politicians are increasingly becoming a major threat to our democracy therefore it is important for us to make this call, that they need to tarry a while and build a better commitment and understanding that will help strengthen our democracy.’’
Abdu stressed that the group would continue to work to deepen the credibility of the 2019 electoral process even though the challenges of vote buying was there.
He said that the group was working towards a statistical method of defining focus and assigning observers to the entire 774 local government areas, with the capacity to share information electronically.
National Commissioner Elections and Political Parties, of the National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Antonia Okoosi-Simbine, commended YIAGA AFRICA for always using the Parallel Vote Tabulation to verify INEC’s results.
Okoosi-Simbine said that this had helped INEC greatly by adding value to the credibility of its results, adding that the methodology had been fantastic.
“We have an organisation that is doing very systematic and scientific work, if not for them maybe people would really question the results that we bring out particularly when issues like vote buying are around elections,,’’she said
Also speaking, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria Ms Catriona Laing and the USAID Nigeria Mission Director, Mr Stephen Haykin assured Nigeria of their support for credible polls.
Haykin repeated that the U.S. has no anointed candidate in Nigeria ahead of the 2019 elections, adding that its support was basically to help citizens achieve their will.
