Adamawa elects new governor today

It is D-Day in Adamawa as voters will today decide the fate of ousted Governor, Admiral Murtala Nyako (rtd) of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), Brig-Gen. Mohammed Buba Marwa (rtd.) of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and Engr. Marcus Gundiri of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). They are the frontrunners in the gubernatorial race in the state.Already, security has been beefed up throughout the state as additional 15, 000 policemen drawn from Gombe, Taraba, Enugu and Benue State Police Commands have been deployed in the state to complement the number already on ground.

Besides, a group of election monitors made up of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) and Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), the Federation of Muslim Women’s Association (FOMWAN), Justice, Development, Peace/Caritas (JDPC) under the umbrella Project Swift Count (PSC) has also deployed 834 observers for the election today.

PSC’s 1st co-chair, Mr. Dafe Akpedeye, spoke of the need to ensure that the election is conducted under a free atmosphere devoid of fear and intimidation. Akpedeye said security during the election is very critical especially during voting, vote counting and transmission of results.

“Voters must be able to vote without fear and election observers must be able to observe without intimidation”.

In the same vein, Akpedeye said the security agents to be deployed must not allow themselves to be used by any individual or group to intimidate and harass voters at polling booths.

He also appealed to INEC to ensure that the election is conducted in a transparent manner in order to ensure the integrity of the electoral process. He charged INEC to adhere strictly to guidelines in order to avoid creating credibility and legitimacy problems.

He said the group is going to use the swift count methodology it adopted for the 2011 general election and the December governorship election in Kogi State.

He said: “To this end, PSC will deploy a total of 834 observers to observe the election on Saturday. Of this figure, 800 will be deployed to randomly-selected polling units spread across the 21 local government areas of the state while the remaining 34 will rove during the election. The observers have been duly accredited by INEC for this exercise having met the stipulated conditions. All the observers were trained for this purpose in 30 centres spread across the state in January 2012.”





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