YIAGA Africa has called for peaceful and credible elections in the upcoming November 16th governorship elections in Bayelsa and Kogi states .
The Executive Director, Samson Itodo in a press statement issued in Abuja said there is need for election stakeholders to put mechanisms in place to ensure a participatory credible and peaceful elections in the states.
He said YIAGA Africa in a bid to share our election observation deployment plan, seek stakeholder buy-in and explore areas of collaboration as well as provide information on the pre-election observation deployment for Bayelsa and Kogi.
“There are no credible elections without peace, and this makes our advocacy visit to the Commissioner of Police and the Commandant of National Security and Civil Defence Corps in Bayelsa state very vital at this crucial point in time.
“The visit to security agency enabled us analyze and share early warning systems against security threats for immediate response ahead of the elections.
“While informed citizen participation is vital to a credible election, we believe that not only the electoral commission has a role to play in educating voters; other stakeholders including religious and traditional leaders can play huge roles as influencers to their followers in preaching the credible and peaceful polls.
“ In this vein, the team successfully engaged head of Traditional Rulers Council, Pa Alfred Papapreye Diette-Spiff who expressed his delight, while urging the team to swing into action, report any wrong doings to the appropriate authority and help achieve a credible process.
“The team also met with the Ijaw Elders Forum who declared readiness to work for credible election as it has already commenced sensitization of the citizens to ensure violence-free elections.
“They assured to monitor negative utterances and actions of political actors and follow-up to ensure they are prosecuted. Thus they will be glad to receive credible information from your violence monitoring system, so that we can hold culprits accountable”.
“Finally, we met with representatives of major political parties in Bayelsa state including Chairman and members of the Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC).
“During the meeting with the political parties, we discussed the importance of conducting transparent and democratic political party primaries. YIAGA AFRICA also shared its plan to observe political party primaries in a bid to provide recommendations.