Ahead of the 201 General elections, a Civil Society Organisation, YIAGA AFRICA has conclude plans to train 822 Long term observers drawn from 36 states and 774 Local Government Areas in Nigeria. This was revealed by the Organisation’s Programs Manager, Cynthia Mbamalu during the training of Master Trainers who she said will be travelling to all 36 states in order to train the Pre-election observers.
According to her, as the largest citizen movement committed to credible elections in Nigeria, YIAGA AFRICA will be deploying a total of 822 Pre-election observers under is Watching The Vote project to observe and report the Pre-election environment ahead of the 2019 elections. She said this on Wednesday during training of cohort of Master Trainers in Abuja.
WTV Master Trainers according to Cynthia are cohort of experts in election observation having trained observers for the Anambra, Ekiti and Osun Governorship elections. “The Master Trainers will be training WTV a total of 822 Pre-election Observers also known as Long Term Observers on how to observe and report the Pre-election environment as the 2019 elections approaches”, she said.
She said, YIAGA AFRICA’s WatchingTheVote will be training its The LGA Supervisors who will be serving as Long Term Observers on how to observe and report preparatory activities by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Voter education campaigns by Civil Society Organisation (CSO), and National Orientation Agency (NOA), campaign activities as well as violence monitoring and reporting.”, Cynthia explained. Voter Education, Hate speech, violence indicators, and political party campaigns will also be observed and reported accordingly. This according to her will enable the organization build an early warning system to prevent election malpractice and electoral violence.
According to her, the Nationwide training which will be held in 33 training centres across Nigeria from 5th to 9th November will also access the quality of Long Term Observers as the organization remain committed to building a community of experts on credible elections.
“For we at YIAGA AFRICA, we believe elections is a process and activities that happen before the election are as important as election day activities. Thus we continue to build a community of experts committed to credible elections through training and retraining of our cohort of Master Trainers in order to have an accurate and precise report”, she said
