INEC to assist Lesotho in developing election strategic plan

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Monday pledged to share necessary experience on its Election Strategic Plan with its counterpart in the Kingdom of Lesotho.

Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, gave the undertaking when he received a delegation from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) of Lesotho, which was in Abuja to understudy INEC’s operations, especially the Electoral Strategic Plan.

He commended the IEC of Lesotho for choosing Nigeria as model and best practice for the development of its strategic plan, saying that INEC was quite pleased to interact and share its experience with the visitors.

Yakubu said that elections were no longer “practice of guess work’’, insisting that Elections Management Bodies (EMBs) must prepare for election as a matter of course and strategy.

“Over the next four days, you will be interacting with our staff responsible for the formulation of our last strategic plan.

“We will make available to you all the documents, share experience with you on the validation processes that led to the conclusion of the strategic plan and the strategic programme of action.

“Beyond that, we will also share with you our experience of formulating the election project plan developed from strategic plan and the strategic programme of action.

“We will make these entire document and its processes available to you,’’ he said.

Yakubu also disclosed that the visit was one of the developments from the just-concluded international conference of EMBs in West and Southern Africa on the use of technology in election, which held in Abuja.

“This shows that other countries are seeing something good in the process and the way we plan for our elections in Nigeria,’’ he said.

Earlier, the leader of the delegation, Austeria Ntsike, said that their visit was to acquire new knowledge and information from INEC on how to improve on the kingdom’s electoral processes.

Ntsike, who is the Director of Elections, IEC, said the fact that the first INEC strategic plan achieved over 75 per cent of its objectives showed that it was a success and could be emulated by other countries.

“We chose to come to Nigeria INEC and no other country because of its experience and historic success and its familiarity in culture with the kingdom.

“Again, we chose INEC because of its diverse knowledge in election conduct,’’ she said.

Ntsike expressed hope that after the visit, the delegation would use the experience to make elections in Lesotho more robust as well as address the challenges associated with conduct of elections in the country.

“We are hoping that this will help us to develop strategic plan for a volatile area like ours,’’ she added.