The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission has deployed 163 observers to monitor Saturday’s Governorship and State Assembly elections in Nigeria.
The commission, in a press statement on Wednesday, said the President of the ECOWAS Commission, His Excellency Dr Omar Alieu Touray, was deploying an ECOWAS Election Observation Mission (ECOWAS-EOM) to monitor the March 18 Governorship and State Assembly elections in Nigeria.
According to the statement, “The observers will be drawn from the Community Institutions (the Commission, Parliament, and the Court of Justice); West African Ambassadors accredited to ECOWAS; Member States’ Electoral Commissions and Ministries of Foreign Affairs; and electoral experts from civil society.
“It will also include a 13-member Core Team of electoral experts that has been in Nigeria prior to the presidential and National Assembly elections.”
The statement added that the mission would be backstopped by an ECOWAS Technical Team under the overall coordination of Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security.
“The March 18 elections will complete the current electoral cycle in Nigeria, following the February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections to which ECOWAS deployed 250 observers across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
“The 163-member ECOWAS EOM will be deployed from 15 to 21 March 2023 to eighteen (18) states, identified on the basis of a technical assessment and analysis of trends and hotspots, to physically and remotely monitor the elections,” the statement read in part.
It also listed the states where the observers would be deployed to include: South-west: Lagos, Ogun, Oyo; South-south: Rivers, Edo, Delta; South-east: Enugu, Ebonyi, Imo; North-central: Nasarawa, Plateau, Benue; North-west: Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto; and North-east: Borno, Adamawa, and Taraba.
