The Priest Peace and Justice Initiative (PPJ), a Pentecostal Christian organization, will deploy election observers in 25 Nigerian states for the upcoming 2023 general elections.
The PPJ, an anti-corruption organization, will monitor the elections in collaboration with the McArthur Foundation.
Dr. Agbaji Orinya, the group’s Programme Manager, revealed this during a training session for election observers.
Speaking on how the process works, Dr. Orinya said;
We are going to have a national WhatsApp group where we are going to be coordinating the observers.
They are going to be sending their reports on that group. It is strictly for reporting election observations. Observers are going to be uploading their checklist there at the end of the election exercise.
So, we are deploying election observers in about 25 states including FCT. We also have WhatsApp groups created for the 25 states at the state level, and all election observers are expected to join immediately after their training.
He said the election observers of the group are expected to go to polling units close to them to observe the elections.
However, those in FCT, he said, will observe only the presidential and National Assembly elections.
He explained further, “Basically, the WhatsApp group is for coordination. We will be sharing information with them and getting real-time reports from each observer so that if there’s any danger or need to deploy security or any of our observers need attention, we can easily have it posted on the WhatsApp group.”
The programme manager also revealed that there would be a “Pentecostal Election Observation Room” located at the PPA National headquarters in Abuja.
He said;
Physical and spiritual activities” would take place at the Observation Room where there would also be coordination of election observers.
The situation room will be receiving feeds from the field on that election day.
The benefits of this exercise to the observers is that they will be contributing to the credibility of the electoral process, free, fair and transparent election in 2023, he said.
He recalled that in 2019, the PPJ worked with the African Centre for Leadership Strategy and Development to monitor the election, which had not yet been officially accredited by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
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