BY Fredrick Nwabufo
The European Union (EU) election-observer mission in Nigeria will not be present in the northeast of the country to monitor the general election in February, Santiago Fisas, its chief observer, has said.
However, he hinted that the mission had contacts in the northeast, which would provide it with information regarding the elections.
Fisas, who visited Muhammadu Buhari, All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate in Abuja on Monday, said the mission was avoiding the northeast for security reasons.
“The European electoral mission is a big mission. It started in November because it monitors not only what happens on the election day, but also what happens in the space of time before the election; how the primaries have been done and whether they respected the law, the propaganda, the media, and also any possible claim after the elections. That is our role, not just to follow up on the day of elections,” he said.
“As for the northeast, we cannot be there for security reasons, but we have people deployed very close to the northeast and we have contact there. We have them in Zaria and other places. And we try to have better information that we can have on the northeast but the present situation does not allow us to go to the northeast.”
Responding to the EU delegation, Buhari said: “They have been covering other countries’ elections, although not exactly similar to our own country. They are very experienced people and qualified to cover the coming elections.
“As we have observed, they cannot cover over 120, 000 polling units, but they will place people in strategic places to observe them.”
About 89 local and international election-observer groups were accredited by the Independent National Electoral Commission to monitor the February general election, out of over 60,000 applications received.
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