A civil society will be mandating hundred of it members to monitor the forthcoming Anambra elections in the South-eastern part of Nigeria.

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A group, Youth Initiative for Advocacy, Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) says it has trained over 500 election observers for the November 18, 2017 Anambra State governorship election in the state.

The group said that 500 of them would be stationed specific places while 27 others would be mobile observers to cover 250 polling units in the 21 local government areas (LGAs) of the state.

YIAGA also known as Youth Action Initiative Africa is a civil society organisation which promotes democratic governance, human rights, and youth participation in politics.

At a roundtable discussion with the media tagged:

“Watching the vote project and plans for the observation of the 2017 Anambra gubernatorial elections at Finotel Hotels, Awka, the Project Director, Miss Cynthia Mbamalu, said that one of the core objective is to promote free, fair, peaceful, credible and legitimate elections in Nigeria.

Mbamalu said that YIAGA mission includes ensuring that elections are conducted in accordance with international and regional standards as well as the laws and the constitution of the country and the “declaration of global principles for non-partisan election observa­tion and monitoring by citizen organisations.

She said that Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT) provides the most timely and accurate information on the conduct of and voting counting, and is the observation that can independently verify the accuracy of official Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) election results.

The Training Manager, Mr. Paul James, said that YIAGA is conducting a full scale simulation PVT exercise to test all the major components and to ensure that watching the vote is a success on Election Day.

James said that if the INEC official results fall within YIAGA’s estimated range, then the public, political parties and candidates should have confidence that the official results reflect the ballots cast at polling units. If the results do not reflect the ballots cast, “#watching the vote” will expose it.

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