ECOWAS to Deploy 163 Observers to the Gubernatorial, State Assembly Elections in Nigeria

News Desk 

March 15, 2023

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is deploying one hundred and sixty-three (163) Observers for the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission (ECOWAS-EOM) to the Gubernatorial and State Houses of Assembly Elections in Nigeria to be held on Saturday, March 18, 2023.

This deployment in line with the ECOWAS Supplementary Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance of 2001, is with the Invitation of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to the President of the ECOWAS Commission. Observers will be drawn from the Community Institutions (the Commission, Parliament and the Court of Justice); West African Ambassadors accredited to ECOWAS; Member States’ Electoral Commissions and Ministries of Foreign Affairs; and electoral experts from West African civil society organisations. It will also include a thirteen (13) member core team of electoral experts that has been in the country since the presidential elections.

The mission will be backstopped by an ECOWAS Technical Team under the coordination of Ambassador Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security.

The upcoming deployment follows the holding of the 25 February Presidential and National Assembly elections to which ECOWAS deployed 250 observers across the six geopolitical zones of the country.

The 163-member ECOWAS EOM Team will be deployed from 15 to 21 March 2023 to eighteen (18) States, identified based on technical assessment and analysis of trends and hotspots, to monitor the Governorship and State Assembly elections physically and remotely. The States include:

South-West: Lagos – Ogun – Oyo

South-South: Rivers – Edo – Delta

South-East: Enugu – Ebonyi – Imo

North-Central: Nasarawa – Plateau – Benue

North-West: Kano – Kaduna – Sokoto

North-East: Maiduguri – Adamawa – Taraba