CSO partners INEC for credible elections

The Transition Monitoring Group has partnered with the Independent National Electoral Commission to ensure credible elections during next year’s poll.

To achieve this, the TMG concluded a two-day intensive training the trainers’ programme for 18 state coordinators in Kano State on Tuesday.

During the event, the TMG Chairman, Auwal Musa (Rafsanjani), promised to ensure the implementation of the reviewed Electoral Act in the 2023 election.

He added that TMG has entered into a partnership with INEC toward ensuring that the 2023 general election becomes the most credible and transparent poll in Nigeria.

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He also restated the readiness of the group to ensure that the recent electoral reforms fought for both collectively and individually reflect the outcome of the election.

”It was our desire to pull the state coordinators from the length and breadth of the country to one event, but due to logistic reasons, we have been forced to break the event into two. Last week, we held the southern leg of this workshop in Enugu, this week we are here in Kano for the northern leg,” Musa said.

According to Musa, TMG is partnering with INEC toward ensuring a free, fair and credible election in 2023, which is about 96 days away.

He said the training was to keep TMG at the front forefront of civic engagement and puts us on the map again to attract bigger funding in the future.

“Hence, the implementation of this project becomes even more crucial, as the Secretariat had tried to ensure the involvement of the state coordinators in the concept of the project.”

“It is within this idea that the training of trainers’ workshop is organized to refresh knowledge and equip the coordinators with the responsibilities ahead of the 2023 election.”

Similarly, Musa stated that the TMG is also holding discussions, with the various Security agencies toward ensuring the safety of both human and INEC’s sensitive materials, as well as violent-free and peaceful elections.

In his paper presentation, the INEC Head of Unit, Voter Education, Garba Ashiru, said the commission has increased the transparency and confidence of the public in its election processes.

“I can confidently submit that the days of wanton manipulation of election results are over. Apart from that, the Commission is not resting on its oars, knowing that it must be thousands of kilometres ahead of those, who seek to undermine the system.”

“The importance of IRev to the transparency of results management is obvious. I call on all stakeholders to support the Commission to continue to improve IRev and the entire result management system toward the 2023 general election, which will be far more extensive than what we have done so far.”