EDO GUBER: ANEEJ TO TRAIN ELECTION MONITORS

By  SIMON EBEGBULEM
BENIN-AHEAD the July 14, governorship election in Edo State, the African Network for Environmental and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), a non-governmental organization, said plans have been concluded for the training of election monitors and journalists in order to ensure successful coverage of the exercise.

The Executive Director of the ANEEJ, Reverend David Ugolor, said the group would ensure a successful conduct of the election, particularly sensitizing the people on the need to defend their votes because, 'the cost of reclaiming stolen mandate is too high.'

He said journalists would be trained on how to use telephone cameras to capture the results of the election after declaration and post same to election collation centers where similar network would be set up.

According to him,' we want to be sure we have any of the results before the announcement. We want to be proactive this time because we don't want to go to the court to claim mandate because it costs money and this kind of environment we are today is not the type you think the rule of law is operational. We want to train individual citizens to be journalist'

'We are targeting 200 to 600 election citizen journalists that would monitor the election across the 18 Local Government Areas in Edo state. We are doing this, because we know journalists may not be able to be everywhere during the election' he stated.

Ugulor further urged politicians in the state to sell their manifestoes to the people of the state so as to enable the people make their choices, adding that ' it will be the best for the politicians rather than relying on rigging which will never be possible again in Edo state'..