Forty eight hours to the 2023 Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections, Diaspora Medics For Good Governance (DM4GG) has asked Nigerian voters to come out enmasse to cast their votes.
The group made the appeal in jointly signed statement on Thursday by some of its Directors – Dr Chukwudi Muojieje, Dr Kunle Adedeji, Dr Chete M. Eze-Nliam, Dr Idu Nwapa, Prof Dilly Anumba, and Mrs. Maureen Aghomon.
They said despite widespread dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Presidential elections on February 25, Nigerian voters should go out to vote for their choices in the gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly elections across political parties.
The statement reads in part, “The Diaspora Medics for Good Governance (DM4GG), a diaspora-based group comprising mainly medical professionals with the vision of restoring Nigeria’s health and related sectors to their full potential, has expressed dissatisfaction with the conduct of the February 25 Presidential election, noting that it was characterized by irregularities and electoral manipulations”.
“DM4GG believes that good governance is indispensable to the actualization of a vibrant and healthy society and therefore appeals to Nigerian voters to come out and carry out their civic duties by voting on March 18, 2023 during the Governorship and State House of Assembly elections.”
The group added that in order to avert irregularities and rigging at the forthcoming Governorship and State House of Assembly elections on March 18, it has evaluated and endorsed the WhatsApp Bot developed by Mrs. Itoro Liney to be used to report election results from the polling units across the 176,974 Polling Units in the country.
Giving explanation on how to use the WhatsApp Application, the group said that “the idea is to send results from our respective Polling Units to a central collating place, so that the true results are documented in real time and compared to the eventual official results declared by INEC, thereby ensuring that we can have confidence in the process.
“The first step is to send a WhatsApp message (such as “Hi”) to +1234-901-3331 (also accessible via this link: https://t.co/e3coD4RDN1). You will receive a reply from the Bot asking you to identify your State from a list of states, followed by your local government area (LGA) from a list of LGAs, then your Ward from a list of Wards, and finally your Polling Unit (from a list of Polling Units). Once you choose your PU, it will ask which election you want to submit a result for, followed by which party and candidate you want to report for, and the number of votes that the candidate received at your PU.
“It will then give you options to add the votes for each of the other candidates at the election. At the end you will also be able to upload an image of the duly signed Form EC8 which captures the final vote tally for all the participating parties. Uploading this form is very important if you have an image of it on your camera.”
