ECOWAS concludes deployment today for Nigeria’s election; former Prez Kufuor leads team
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will complete its deployment for Saturday’s Nigerian presidential elections today with the arrival of the leader of its election monitoring and observation team, former President John Agyekum Kufuor, in Abuja.
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The former Ghanaian President and his team will stay until the end of the elections, monitoring what happens before, during and after the polls.
President John Dramani Mahama, who is the Chairman of ECOWAS, made this known at a media briefing in Abuja last Monday after meeting the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari, at the presidential wing of the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.
Mr Mahama was on a one-day visit to Nigeria to confer with the people on the impending elections and especially get the political leaders and other stakeholders to make the elections free, fair and credible.
Earlier in the morning, Mr Mahama had met with President Goodluck Jonathan and the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),Prof. Attahiru Jega, during which they discussed all issues that had to do with the elections.
“I had firm assurances that everything is set to go on March 28," Mr Mahama said.
Buhari's concern
He mentioned that Gen. Buhari had raised some concerns during the meeting.
“There are few issues Buhari had brought out which I will refer appropriately to our monitoring group and I hope that in the discussions that will take place before the elections some of the issues that have been raised will be addressed," he said.
ECOWAS satisfied
The Buhari concerns notwithstanding, President Mahama said ECOWAS was satisfied with the deployment that the various monitoring groups were going to do.
"So the international community is going to have its eyes on the country to witness how the elections go and be able to make decisions and endorsements if everything has gone free and fair,” he said.
He added that West Africa and the international community were watching Nigeria because of the critical nature of the elections and also the fact that the elections were another step towards consolidating democracy in Nigeria.
“We expect the elections to be free, transparent and credible. ECOWAS is going to do everything possible to work with the political stakeholders and the INEC to make sure that the process is credible and acceptable to the people of Nigeria," he said.
He said from the briefing he had from the INEC Chairman, he was convinced that the commission had done satisfactorily well to be able to ensure that every Nigerian exercises his or her franchise.
Mr Mahama also met with the leaders of various representative groups, including the AU representative, the UN Secretary-General’s representative and the representative of the Commonwealth.
Safety of Nigeria
The ECOWAS Chairman said he felt assured that all the political leaders were looking forward to free and fair elections.
"I want to affirm to the people of Nigeria that the country is an important one, not only for ECOWAS but the AU. It is the largest economy on this continent. It is also the most populous and its safety is important to every member of the ECOWAS region,” the President said, and expressed the hope that Nigerians would rise up to the occasion.
