By Michael Oche
Election observer group, Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) has called on the security agencies who have been deployed for Saturday’s election duties, to conduct themselves with utmost neutrality and professionalism.
The charge was given on Friday at a press briefing by the election observer group, while declaring open its Situation Room for the 2023 General elections, in Abuja.
Prof. Anthony Olusanya, a member of the Team of Experts for CTA, disclosed that the group will be deploying a total of 2,000 observers across Nigeria.
He noted that the 2023 General elections is a defining moment for Nigeria and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) given the relative state of insecurity across the country.
He added that the spate of attacks on INEC facilities in some parts of the country as well as the general state of insecurity in some other parts remains a major challenge to the conduct of the elections.
Prof Olusanya also called on political parties and their agents to conduct themselves in accordance with the election guidelines and the rules of engagement at polling units and collation centres.
Also speaking, Executive Director of the CTA, Faith Nwadishi urged citizens to shun all forms of malpractices including vote buying and selling.
The CTA boss commended INEC performance so far, urging them not to rest on their oars until a free, fair and credible election is delivered to the Nigerians.
She noted that several innovations have been introduced into the 2023 General Elections.
These include the deployment of the Bi-modal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), the electronic transmission of election results from the polling units direct to INEC’s portal and INEC Result Viewing portal (IReV) among others.
She said, “In preparing for this election, the CTA conducted stakeholders’ meetings across the six geo-political zones, held several press conferences on different issues as they arose, observed the Mock Accreditation across the states, trained observers, Sensitization of the PWDs in the FCT. These are parts of CTA’s ongoing contributions towards a successful conduct of the 2023 General Elections and the long term sustenance of democracy in Nigeria.”
