2023: ‘We’re creating electoral force to ensure credible polls’ – Group

[From CHINEDU NWAFOR, Abakaliki]

Group, the Polling Unit Ambassadors of Nigeria (PUAN) has announced that it would create polling unit electoral force to ensure that 2023 general elections were free, fair and credible.

Ambassador-General of PUAN, Captain Garba Suleiman, who announced this in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State capital, during the inauguration of State and Area polling units ambassadors, Ebonyi State Chapter, on Thursday, said PUAN would deploy five polling unit ambassadors to each polling unit across the country during the polls.

According to Suleiman, PUAN is creating a polling unit electoral force, where we are bringing everybody who has a PVC together as a team to ensure that they will all come together to decide what they can do to help their communities.

He said PUAN had the core mandate to protect the integrity of the polls in Nigeria and had been partnering with INEC and other relevant stakeholders since it was founded in 2018 to realize its mandate.

The Ambassador-General further explained that  PUAN was a nonpartisan organization; saying, “PUAN does not support any political party neither does it support candidates of political parties. Our mandate is to ensure that the electorate become the ultimate decider of every electoral democratic process in Nigeria. And that’s all we have been preaching all over the country.”

“Our focus is to sensitize the people, for those who don’t have their PVCs to go register and get their PVCs. On the day of election, we advise them to go out there and vote for the candidates of their choice.

“Our interest is for the people to vote in, the candidates of their choice. Again, we want to protect the integrity of the polls, so that whenever and whoever you cast your vote for, is the person that at the end of the day you will see.

“So, for that reason, we are creating a polling unit electoral force, where we are bringing everybody who has a PVC together as a team to ensure that they will all come together to decide what they can do to help their communities.

“As a force, they can say we want pipe borne water, we want health care and we will discuss it with people who want to seek our votes if they will do this for us and we will enter into an agreement with them and be able to hold them accountable.

“We are planning towards 2023 to have five polling units ambassadors in each polling unit across the Nigeria. Each of the five polling unit ambassadors have their assignments; there is one monitoring INEC officials, there is one monitoring the security agencies, there is one monitoring the party agents, there is one monitoring the electorate themselves and there is one who is the chief ambassador who collates all these information; because in 2023 our interest is that all election processes in every polling unit including results are transmitted electronically to our Abuja based porter in real time basis.

“Elections are not rigged in the polling units, elections are rigged in the process of taking it to the collation centre. So, we want to capture all the process first at the polling units, so that whatever you are doing thereafter will be null and void, because we would have captured all the processes at the polling units including the results and have it in our system. So that’s our plan for 2023”, Suleiman explained.

Suleiman said the PUAN had been inaugurated in 21 states of the federation with the major task of sensitizing and educating Nigerians to change the narrative beclouding the country’s political system.

“We have been going round talking to Nigerians to change the narrative. We all know that the way governance is run in Nigeria, most of us are not feeling so comfortable with it. And we believe that the stage we are right now, we should have gone passed this stage when it comes to dividends of democracy, good governance and better electoral process.

“But here today, Nigerians have to be sensitized and educated and that’s is what PUAN is doing, going around to sensitize and educate Nigerians to know the power of the PVC to vote in the right person that will change their communities, because if they are waiting for politicians or electoral officials to change their communities, that will take long. If we gather together as residents of a particular community and decided to vote in a leader that will change our community, then, we can work hand in hand with them to make things work,” he concluded.

Deputy Ambassador-General of PUAN, South East zone, Amb. Ogbuefi Zaccheaus Ifeuwabundidi, in his remarks, said  the inauguration of PUAN in Ebonyi, being the first State to be inaugurated in the zone, had signified the beginning of the process of illuminating the minds and paths of the electoral class who had been groping in political oblivion in the region.

Ogbuefu vowed to ensure that PUAN was inaugurated in all the States of South East zone, any time soon.