The Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) is honoured to announce its collaborative efforts to ensure accountability and transparency in the upcoming gubernatorial elections in Nigeria.
The Centre, in preparation for the presidential elections, established a media cohort partnership with the goal of amplifying real-time election field reports from the observers it deployed. The coalition will also be covering the gubernatorial elections on March 18th.
This coalition, which includes the CJID, Premium Times, Media Trust Group, and the International Centre for Innovation and Development amongst others, is designed to support the media with credible real-time information that will improve the quality of information available on electoral activities. In line with this, the CJID will deploy 60 observers/reporters across 31 states to provide situation analyses of election day proceedings; media houses will have access to CJID observers-generated data to aid their coverage.
Additionally, the Centre has entered into partnerships with various Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to ensure the validity and robustness of the data and information it would disseminate. CJID will work with DUBAWA and the Nigerian Fact-Checkers Coalition (NFC) to identify claims and produce and disseminate fact-check reports as part of efforts to curb the spread of misinformation and disinformation during the elections.
Commenting on what to expect from the coalition, Kemi Busari, DUBAWA editor said the NFC noted a surge in false information across several platforms during the presidential election held on February 25th and anticipates the same in the gubernatorial elections.
“We saw old contents recycled as new, false withdrawal claims, false claims on the electoral process and many others,” Mr Busari said. “We envisage a similar situation in the governorship elections and we are set to work throughout the period from our Lagos and Abuja situation rooms.”
One of the biggest challenges faced in the just-concluded presidential elections was in the result collation and transmission process Several incidences of malpractice and lag between counting and upload affected citizens and broke trust in the electoral system. To address these, the CJID is setting up two situation rooms – one in Lagos in partnership with the Electoral College Nigeria for the sole purpose of monitoring Lagos State and another in Abuja to coordinate other states of the Federation. Citizens have been encouraged to crowdsource Form EC8A result sheets from the PU level. This crowdsourcing of results is being implemented together with EiE, Dataphyte and Civichive.
We ask citizens to send pictures of the form EC8A from their polling units to WhatsApp on the phone number – 0907 700 7057.
CJID’s Executive Director, Dr Tobi Oluwatola, stressed the importance of collaboration, particularly around what he called “high-value issues like elections,” adding that “when we collaborate meaningfully, we can contribute in promoting transparency and accountability around elections in Nigeria, which are the sure paths to democratic consolidation.”
Dr Oluwatola thanked collaborating partners and called on all stakeholders and citizens to join in the movement and play their part in all goodwill to lead the country’s democracy to greater heights.
Signed:
Mr Mboho Eno
Deputy Director | Accountability