By GIWA Shile
A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), YIAGA Africa, says it will expose anyone that attempt to undermine or rig the processes of the forthcoming general elections through its Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology.
The YIAGA Executive Director, Mr Samson Itodo, made this assertion in Abuja on Saturday at a one-day media roundtable on the 2019 general elections and deployment of the Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) methodology for the Presidential elections.
YIAGA Africa is a civic non-governmental organisation or initiative involved in promoting democracy, governance and development in Africa through advocacy, research and capacity building.
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“The message for Nigerians including the politicians, who will stop at nothing to compromise the process, is that if there is fraud, if anyone attempts to compromise these elections, YIAGA Africa Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) will expose it.”
He listed some of the values of the PVT to include its potential to verify election results, deepen the integrity of the process, as well as ensure the acceptability of the elections outcome.
According to him, as it is now there is crisis of confidence in the electoral process from different stakeholders.
“We are concern that at different levels, people will not accept the results because they will think that the process has been compromised.
“What YIAGA is doing now is to say there is a methodology that has the capacity to verify any result declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), particularly the presidential election.
“So there will be no need to take to violence or cause any form of instability because there is a methodology that can provide evidence,” he said.
Itodo expressed optimism that the deployment of the PVT for the election would help to boost citizen confidence in the electoral process.
He advised Nigeria journalists to embrace the global trend of data driven elections reportage as they covered activities related to the forthcoming general elections.
Itodo, who described data as new oil, said that the growing trend in election reporting was data driven reportage that gave more credibility to electoral processes.
He said that data reporting and investigative journalism on the forthcoming elections were important as there are already a lot of misinformation and fake news in the public.
He said that the only way to counter fake news and misinformation is by using data and evidence, saying gone are those days when people focus more on non-data reporting of an election.
The executive director noted that non-data reporting of elections to a large extent does not provide a detailed assessment of how an election has been conducted.
“One of the things that we do at YIAGA is generating data and using it to assess the credibility and acceptability of the process, as well as using data to facilitate reforms.
“Data is the new oil, even in election. So in your reporting, we encourage you to focus on data and what data is saying and interpreting the data on the assessment of the election,’’ the YIAGA chief said.
Itodo also called for more collaborations between civil society organisations and the media in ensuring that the forthcoming elections reflected the wishes and will of Nigerians.
He said that the recent events unfolding in the country was a call to action for different stakeholders to actually rise up in defense of democracy and ensuring that the electoral process was in compliance to standards.
“As we go towards these elections in the next two weeks, we have got a big challenge before us. The challenge is to ensure that these elections reflect the will and wishes of the Nigerian people.
“To make that happen, civil societies and the media need to work together because Feb. 16 and March 2 are perhaps the only unique opportunity that Nigerians will have to exercise their sovereignty.’’
YIAGA Watching the Vote (WTV) Project Director, Cynthia Mbamalu, stressed the need for all stakeholders to ensure that the forthcoming elections were credible.
“As citizens, we will all be victims if we have elections that are not credible,’’ she said.
The YIAGA Africa WTV Training Manager, Mr Paul James, presenting the overview of PVT, described the methodology as a powerful citizens’ tool for assessing the conduct of polling on election day and verifying official results as announced by INEC.
He said that PVT to be deployed for 2019 presidential elections, would rely on real time information from over 3,000 YIAGA WTV observers that would be deployed to 1, 515 polling unit in every local government in Nigeria.
James said that the methodology which provide information on the conduct of accreditation, voting, and counting as well as independently verifies the official election results as announced by INEC had been used in some African countries.
YIAGA Africa has also successfully deployed the methodology in the September 2018 Governorship election in Osun state; July 2018 Governorship election in Ekiti State; 2017 governorship election in Anambra state; and the 2016 Governorship election in Ondo State.’’
Mr Richard Klein, the Senior Advisor, Elections, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), said that YIAGA did not care about who won the forthcoming elections but the credibility of the process.—NAN
