The Director, Initiative for Research Innovation and Advocacy in Development (IRIAD), Electoral Hub, Princess Hamman-Obels has called for strategies to improve capacities and credibility of electoral management bodies in Nigeria.
She noted this at the just concluded public presentation and inaugural meeting organized by the Electoral Hub in Abuja adding that the hub conceptualized the Electoral Forum as a way to pull resource persons from electoral management bodies together with other electoral stakeholders.
This ,Hamman-Obels called for deepen understanding of the electoral process in Nigeria ,as well as provide solutions to improve electoral integrity and credibility.
Hamman-Obels said that the aim of the forum was to facilitate systematic electoral reform, promote evidence-based law-making ,policy and advocacy on elections in Nigeria .
Also, the National Commissioner, Independent National Electoral Commission ,(INEC) Mrs May Agbamuche-Mbu, said that the launch of the forum would enrich knowledge and enhance understanding of the electoral process in Nigeria and serve as reference point for political parties and voters.
Agbamuche-Mbu assured Nigerians that the commission would continue to improve on its processes for more transparent credible elections and urged all eligible voters to utilise the continuous voter registration to get voter cards,transfer their cards among others.
“Nine weeks into the exercise ,we have witnessed 2,485,770 online registrants and 3,325,741 in total ,these figures are encouraging and of the online registrants 2,160,292 are youths between ages 18 to 34,’’ she said
She said that recently ,INEC conducted the expansion of polling units creating an additional 57,023 units across the country bringing the total units to 176,996 adding that the aim was to bring the voting process closer to the people .
