Centre for Transparency Advocacy (CTA) Friday urged Nigerian electorate to remain vigilant, law abiding and peaceful in all their conduct before, during and after election.

CTA also called on the voters to avoid all forms of malpractices including vote buying and selling.

The Executive Director CTA, Ms Faith Nwadishi, in a press statement made available to the media stated,

“In the same vein, we call on political parties and their agents to conduct themselves in accordance with the election guidelines and the rules of engagement at polling units and collation centres”.

The CTA equally calls on the security agencies who have been deployed in election duties to conduct themselves with utmost neutrality and professionalism.

According to the Centre, “The CTA recognises the important role that these agencies play in the maintenance of law and order, safeguarding of election officials and materials as well as the electorate”.

The statement said: “Nigeria on the 25^th February 2023 commences its seventh General Elections since the return to civil rule in 1999.

“The Presidential and National Assembly takes place on 25^th February, while the Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly Elections will hold on 11^th March 2023.

“The process began officially on 22^nd February 2022 with the publication of Notice of Elections and a 14 point election timetable which includes the following; party primaries, submission of list of candidates, campaigns and voting, which will see the emergence of a new president for Nigeria.

“So far, this timetable has been religiously observed and has been variously described as historic and momentous.

“There are 93,469,008 registered voters across 8,809 registration wards and 176,846 polling units across 774 Local Government country

“A total of 15,331 contestants including 18 presidential candidates are vying for various positions.

“The 2023 General elections is a defining moment for Nigeria and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) given the relative state of insecurity across the country.

“The spate of attacks on INEC facilities in some parts of the country as well as the general state of insecurity in some other parts remains a major challenge to the conduct of the elections.

“Several innovations have been introduced into the 2023 General Elections. “These include the deployment of the Bi-modal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS), the electronic transmission of election results from the polling units direct to INEC’s portal and INEC Result Viewing portal (IReV) among others.

“The CTA is deploying a total of 2,000 observers across Nigeria. To support our field observers, CTA has set up its Situation Room to follow up with field reports from observers to generally establish common trends towards gauging the level of compliance with minimum international standard for credible elections.

“In preparing for this election, the CTA conducted stakeholders’ meetings across the six geo-political zones, held several press conferences on different issues as they arose, observed the Mock Accreditation across the states, trained observers, Sensitization of the PWDs in the FCT.

“These are parts of CTA’s ongoing contributions towards a successful conduct of the 2023 General Elections and the long term sustenance of democracy in Nigeria.

“While commending INEC’s performance so far, we enjoin INEC not to rest on their oars until a free, fair and credible election is delivered to the Nigerian people.”

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