Polls: Legislative institute to deploy 143 monitors in 23 states

This was disclosed on Monday in Abuja at a meeting between the management of the institute and the monitoring team, which comprises staff of the institute and some celebrities from both Nollywood and Kannywood.A look at the breakdown of the election monitors showed that each of the 23 states will have a coordinator and five […]

This was disclosed on Monday in Abuja at a meeting between the management of the institute and the monitoring team, which comprises staff of the institute and some celebrities from both Nollywood and Kannywood.
A look at the breakdown of the election monitors showed that each of the 23 states will have a coordinator and five assistants, while five celebrities will also join them in the exercise, making a total of 143.
Speaking at the meeting, Director General of the institute, Dr Ladi Hamalai, said NILS was empowered by the Act establishing it to monitor polls and carry out research to promote good governance and entrench democratic principles in the country.
She noted that the exercise would help in assessing the quality of Nigerian elections with a view to helping future exercises, saying the institute would have loved to sponsor more monitors for the polls but due to lack of funds, it had to limit itself to the current number and make do with what is available.
“The institute will be there to observe and see how the processes are being conducted. This is what should be the main task as we go out to assess the quality of the electoral process: how fair and objective it is. That is how we’ll come up with our results to see if our observations and conclusions can fit into future improvements in the electoral process,” she said.
She said the celebrities incorporated into the programme would help the institute in advocating good democratic conduct, legislative procedures, good governance among others.
Celebrities present at the event included Bimbo Akintola, Jamila Nagudu, Garba Lawal and Barrister John Obu, coordinator of Next2None Initiative.