LAGOS – Ahead of the 2023 general elections, the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) Fact-Finding Mission for Nigeria Elections has said that the forthcoming election is important, not only to Nigeria but African continent, and called on all stakeholders to play their roles to achieve a free, fair and credible election.
The Head of the Mission and former Chairman of the Electoral Commission of Ghana, Dr. Kwadu Afari-Gyan stated this over the weekend when the mission paid a courtesy visit to the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, Abdul-Azeez Adediran, also called Jandor and his campaign team at his Liberty House office in Ikeja.
Afari-Gyan said that the need for free, fair and credible elections brought the mission to Nigeria in order to see how the process has been going and the challenges the participants could be facing.
He said that the delegation has spoken with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), security agencies and others, adding that the mission is moving to various regions across the country to hear from stakeholders.
“This election is very important, not only for Nigeria but to all of us in Africa and even beyond. We dare not fail. If we fail, it is going to spell doom far beyond Nigeria. That is how critical this election is.
“For us, we want free, fair and credible election but the words ‘free’ and ‘fair’ carry important contents- It must be free to do certain things and elections must be free from certain things.
“What should be fair, and who should be fair? We must think about all these,” Afari-Gyan said.
The leader stressed the need for all stakeholders to join hands together to ensure that the nation conducts the election that would be a model for the continent.
“Most of the time, we are looking to the electoral commission, the election management body. An election is such a complex activity that many organisations have roles to play.
“At the end of the day, the way an election goes depends to a large extent on how well various components play their role.
“Electoral Commission is the organiser officially mandated to conduct an election, and the electoral commission alone cannot achieve free, fair and election. It takes a collective activity including the government. The government must bring the money. If the government fails to bring the money to organise the things that need to be done, the election will be deficient,” he said.
He urged the candidates to also comport themselves well so as not to ignite violence capable of disrupting the exercise.
Afari-Gyan said: “We cannot talk of elections without candidates. Candidates must conduct their campaigns, for example, in a way consistent with democratic expectations.
“The campaign must be free from violence, hate speech and abusive languages. A candidate must be free to go everywhere in the constituency to campaign and try to convince the people he is the best.
“Let us remember that the electoral commission is not a king maker, it is the people. In elections, we talk about the sanctity of the votes. If you cast the votes, it must be counted the way it was cast and everybody who is qualified must be given the opportunity to vote.”
He said that a lot of lessons would be learnt from Nigeria by other members of the ECOWAS, who would be having elections in 2023, 2024 and so on.
“All of them will be impacted on in one way or the other by what happens in Nigeria. So, please, let us commit ourselves to achieving free, fair and credible elections,” he said.
He then asked the PDP candidate if there were challenges in his campaigns and getting his messages to the people through the press.
According to him, the team wants to know where it can give moral support and advice to the government.
“We will talk to any political party that is willing to talk to us to know about their problems and candidates in the thick of the affairs,” he said.
Responding, Jandor, who commended the team for the visit, noted that the visit was a bit late because the election was a process and not an event.
According to him, the fact-finding mission should have also been in touch right from voter registration exercise to see challenges some groups faced in getting registered, saying some eligible voters were not able to register before the suspension of the exercise.
Adediran said that the delegation perhaps could have averted some hiccups during voter registration if the mission interacted with relevant authorities.
“Here, in Lagos State we are in opposing camp because we have a government in power for the past 23 years.
“What we are doing this time is to see how we can change the narrative and give the people of Lagos a breath of fresh air. I think people should have a free atmosphere to select their leaders in 2023.
“We understand that somebody, who wants to lose something will struggle but not to the point of infringing on people’s rights or going in the wrong side of the regulations of the exercise.
“We have a couple of experiences like this which we have taken to the court of public opinion, especially in the area of campaign materials,” he said.
It got to the point that they had to threaten players in the outdoor advertising industry. Warning them not to fly our campaigns and the ones that we had paid for earlier had to refund our money, The ones already carrying our materials yanked them off and made refunds to us. We have evidences of all of these.
“Each time we put our posters out there, they removed them with government facilities not even at night but in the day.
“We had a case of traders of Alaba international market closing the market to participate in the INEC continuous voters’ registration exercise and we saw supporters from the ruling party going there to disrupt the exercise,” he said.
The PDP candidate added that his convoy was attacked on Sunday by political thugs and that people, including journalists, got wounded in one of his campaign tours to various wards in the state.
“If the process leading to the day of elections appears so violent, then what do we expect on the day of elections.
“We believe that this mission will look at some of these things and see how we can interact with the authorities so that people can choose freely and fairly those they want to be their leaders.
“We will continue to do our best and seek votes and canvass for support from the people because people want the change,” he said.
According to him, if the ECOWAS mission is about free and fair election, it must treat election as a process and not as an event.
Members of the ECOWAS delegation include Mr Mohammed Konnel, the Chief Electoral Commissioner, Sierra Leone; Dr. Remi Ajibewa, Director, Political Affairs, ECOWAS and Dr. Oninye Orukuwa, Head of Peace and Mediation Unit, ECOWAS.
Others were: ASP Nuru Amidu, Head of ECOWAS Security and Mr Abu Turkey, Election Technical Expert, ECOWAS.
