A member of the board of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue and former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel, Dr Mohamed Ibn Chambas, on Thursday said Nigeria must get it right by delivering credible, free and fair elections next year.
Chambas, a former President of the ECOWAS Commission, said this in Abuja while delivering a keynote address during a book presentation on “Post-Election Assessment of Conflict Management Mechanisms in Nigeria 2019 and Beyond”, organised by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD).
He said Africa and the global community were looking up to Nigeria and as such the stakeholders in the electoral process must do all that was needed to deliver transparent and credible elections.
Chambas, while urging the federal government to address security challenges to ensure a peaceful atmosphere for the conduct of the general elections, also admonished the political gladiators not to see the elections as do-or-die.
Earlier, the Regional Director, Anglophone and Lusophone Africa at CHD, Dr Babatunde Afolabi, urged stakeholders, including INEC, security agencies, political parties and CSOs, to play critical roles that would lead to the success of the polls.
INEC’s Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, represented by the commission’s Deputy Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Chukwuemeka Ugboaja, said the commission was working hard to ensure that conflicts were highly minimised before, during and after the polls.
