Nigeria 2015 election : We will not monitor elections in northeast ? EU mission

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The Head of the European Election Observation Mission to Nigeria, Santiago Ayxela, said this team will not be monitoring the forthcoming elections in the north eastern part of the country due the security concern.


He told journalists in Abuja after a closed- door meeting with the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari , that they will deploy people close to the area and also rely on their contacts in the area for better information.

He said that the team which was constituted to observe the elections in Nigeria was put in place in November 2014 and will be active until April.

He said further that responsibility of the team is not restricted to election day activities alone but the entire electoral process beginning with the conduct of the primaries by the various political parties and compliance with the provisions of the law among other things.

He said, ?First, I want to thank Gen. Buhari for the opportunity to have this interview here. The European Election Mission is a big mission. It is a mission that started in November and will be in place till mid April. What happened on the election day is not only the problem.

?It is what happened during and within a space of time, how their primaries were done, how the law has been complied with, the propaganda, activities of the media and any possible claims after the elections. That is our role and not just to follow up the days of election. This is a very big country with so many inhabitants and so, it is not possible to cover everything. I can?t tell you that we will cover all the wards either for this election or for any other election.

?We can?t be in the northeast for security reasons. But we have people deployed very close to the northeast and we have contacts there and so, try to get better information as much as we can have on the northeast. But the present situation does not allow us to go to the region.?

He said the possibility of hold a similar meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan was very high, stressing that the meeting with the President will depend on his schedule since he will be the one to fix the date for such meeting.

Also speaking with journalists, the APC presidential candidate said the EU election mission is made up of experienced people in election monitoring, stressing that they monitored elections in other countries before now.