Contribute to Improvement of Electoral Process in Nigeria, PAACA Urges CSOs  

Urged to be more professional 

Civil society organisations (CSOs), especially those who observe elections, have been urged to do a self assessment of their roles and how they contribute to improve election processes in Nigeria.

The call came at a two-day post-election review meeting for civil society organisations organised by Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa (PAACA) in collaboration with the National Orientation Agency (NOA).

Following the recently concluded 2023 general election, some CSO were accused of tilting their reports towards partisan inclinations.

However, speaking during the opening of the meeting, Ezenwa Nwagwu, Chairman of PAACA, said there is a need for CSOs who observed the elections to do a review in order to see if they followed the guidelines stipulated by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for election observation.

According to him, election observers are supposed to be neutral, adding however that some groups who observed the elections lacked understanding of their roles as observers.

He said: “The arguments for me is that in the aftermath of the elections, everybody is doing review. And oftentimes, the reviews are just outsourcing blames. There is no mirror reflection in terms of how we value our own contribution as CSOs. So as civil society, especially those of us who  observed that election, it is also important that we have a reflection meeting, and say how did we fare? Did we do well? 

“As CSOs, we talk about INEC, we talk about security, we talk about the media, we talk about everybody participating in election. We have never asked ourselves how does INEC see us? How does the security agencies see our own contribution.

“My description of election observer is like a match commissioner in a football match. Oftentimes, we want to be able to see whether you jumped when a goal is scored by a particular team and whether you are angry when a goal is not scored.”

Nwagwu insisted that elections in Nigeria have improved in recent years, noting that irrespective of challenges experienced in the 2023 elections, the positive outcomes outweighed the negatives.

He said: “We’ve had a leapfrog. Unfortunately, that’s part of what we are not admitting. Our election has leapfrogged from a situation in which for instance, you are dealing with incidence forms. How many people know that incidence form has disappeared. 

“We had an election in which many of the big pockets for instance, the people who we believed had control, including those who were in government lost elections in which they were supposed win.

“What for me is more important is that for this particular meeting, is to talk about our own conduct. How have we been behaving as electoral observers? Have we behaved well? have we done this work professionally? If we have done it professionally, we have to sign post it and put it out there that ‘yes, we’ve done this work well, according to the rules that guides the electoral process.”

Nwagwu frowned on a large number of election observers who were accredited to observe the 2023 elections but have failed to submit their reports, saying their is no justifiable excuse not to so.

Also speaking, the Director General of the NOA, Dr Garba Abari, said it is an undeniable fact that Nigeria’s electoral process is evolving progressively. 

According to him, “The innovations, the incremental reforms and the generally peaceful conduct that we witnessed before, during and after the elections are testimonies to the fact that even though our electoral process may not yet be where we wish it should be, it is certainly not where it used to be. It is therefore important to hold meetings like this which provide stakeholders an opportunity to review what worked in the election and what didn’t work, thus enabling us to make meaningful recommendations that will improve the electoral process.”

Abari, who was represented by Jessica Akiga, Head of ICT and Social Media at the NOA, said ahead of governorship elections in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo, the NOA has observed that many voters, but most importantly even the major players such as political parties and politicians, do not as yet understand the full importance of the new Electoral Act 2022 and the importance of the deployment of technology in the elections.