By Omeiza Ajayi, Abuja

Following the recent wave of attacks on its facilities in some parts of he Southeast and ahead of the Governorship election in Anambra state, the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has disclosed of its resolve to deploy a security application through its Election Monitoring Support Centre EMSC.

INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu disclosed this on Friday in Keffi, Nasarawa state while declaring open a two-day retreat on the optimization of the EMSC operational structure organized by INEC with support from the European Union Centre for Electoral Support ECES.

He said; “As an electoral early-warning, monitoring, implementation and management tool, the EMSC, relying on field offices and personnel across the 36 States and the FCT, alerts the Commission to the challenges, identifies electoral risks/threats and provides real-time information on the status of an election.

“In doing so, the EMSC makes available to the Commission the necessary information in making real-time interventions to avert or mitigate potential risks or threats to an election.

“Most of the tools will be deployed for the elections but what we are trying to do now is to integrate them rather than having individual support tools. The one that is new and innovative that we are deploying in Anambra is the security application in view of what happened recently to our facilities in Anambra and other places in the country. So, in others you may have different tools but they all work towards achieving the same goal and we want to integrate all the tools towards achieving that goal.

“These tools have been of tremendous benefits because otherwise how do you effectively track the deployment of thousands of activities for the election? The best way to track them is actually by deploying technology and that is why we are doing this. We started deploying these tools since 2010 and we have used them for three successive general elections now and they.

According to him, the EMSC has greatly helped the Commission in managing the electoral process.

“As a testimony to its robustness as an election management tool, many countries in the West African Region and beyond have shown interest in studying and adopting the system for their use. The Ethiopian and Malawi Electoral Commissions are already considering the deployment of some aspects of the tool in the management of their elections. The EMSC may well be another contribution of INEC (and indeed Nigeria) to election management in the world.

“As pioneers, we need to keep pushing the frontiers of this system, fortifying its strengths, addressing its challenges and expanding its reach in the conduct and management of elections. Having deployed it for the 2019 General Election, the Commission has certainly seen its advantages as well as its challenges. The advantages need to be strengthened and improved upon while resolving the anticipated challenges before the 2023 General Election which is just 560 days away.

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 “It must be repositioned to discharge its most primary responsibilities of providing early warning, identifying threats/risks, monitoring the implementation of election activities and ensuring real-time and accurate information to the Commission on all field-related activities that have a direct bearing on elections”, Mahmood added.

Chairman, Planning, Monitoring and Strategic Committee, Prof. Okechukwu Ibeanu on his part said the EMSC is a very important part of the commitment of INEC to the judicious application of technology in the electoral process.

Project Coordinator, ECES in Nigeria, Hamza Fassi-Fihri in his welcome address recalled that since 2017, ECES’ partnership with the INEC has materialized in various levels of support to the EMSC, within the EU Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) programme.

“The trainings supported have led to the equipping of about 4,500 of the Commission’s staff with technical skills and capacity in monitoring the operational guidelines, data collection, reporting tools, and communication strategy of the EMSC”, he added.