Yiaga Africa says it has trained over 62 journalists and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on pre-election observation methodology for the September 21 governorship election in Edo State.
The Media and Communication Officer, Mrs Jennifer Dafwat disclosed this in an interview with journalists in Benin, the state capital.
Dafwat said the participants consisted of 19 females and 43 males drawn from various media houses and CSOs in the state.
According to her, “We have representations of about 30 Media Houses and 13 CSOs. The programme is tagged: “Yiaga Africa’s Watching the Vote (WTV)-Elections Academy”
”The purpose of the training is for the participants to know the purpose of watching the votes. The training will enable the participants to have a deeper understanding of this methodology and pass it down to the citizens
“It is through citizens’ reports that we get pre-election observations, procedures and any other analysis,” she said.
Earlier, the Programme Manager, Mr Paul James said that the Yiaga team would collate data from 300 polling units from the 4,419 polling units in the state.
James said that 25 Yiaga election observers would be deployed across the 18 Local Government Areas of the state. He emphasized the deployment of the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and statistics and building citizens’ confidence in the forthcoming poll.
A board member of Yiaga Africa, Prof. Nnamdi Aduba, sued for knowledge and intelligence sharing. He lamented the convoluted nature of Nigerian politics and avoidable irregularities during elections in the country.
The University of Jos lecturer argued that it was easy to get the buy-in of voters in an election if the electoral process was transparent and credible. “I am so happy about what I am seeing around; democracy is for everyone. If you empower the natives, you will know that they are not stupid,” he said.
