Kimpact Development Initiative, (KDI), has trained 60 persons drawn from 21 local government areas of Anambra State and select media practitioners to monitor election violence during the Anambra 2025 Governorship Election.
The two-day Nigeria Election Violence Education and Resolution, (NEVER) training was organized by KDI with support the UK International Development and other partners.
The monitors’ task spans through the pre-election, election, and post-election period, are to track, document, and mitigate security situations to achieve peace in the state.
Its Executive Director, Bukola Idowu, said the training was necessitated by gaps identified by KDI during the 2021 Governorship Election, especially the low voter turnout.
“That election had the lowest turnout of voters for any governorship election in the country, due to insecurity.
“We do not want to have that kind of election again because it is a waste of resources.
“INEC made provision for the over 2.5 million registered voters in the state, and we had less than 300,000.
“And because the low voters’ turnout was due to insecurity, we strategically brought this initiative to look at how we can mitigate election violence.
“The election is still in November. When the atmosphere is peaceful, people will come out to participate.
“Also, we are carrying the security agencies along, and the data these monitors will be garnering will be sent to them for prompt action,” he said.
Idowu urged the monitors not to fabricate stories, as the scientific and evidence-based NEVER initiative will be reviewed by experts.
He said the NEVER project, which started in 2019, has been implemented in the Edo and Ondo off-cycle elections.
“It yielded meaningful results providing security agencies and other critical stakeholders with the data to mitigate election violence”.
KDI’s NaijaElections
KDI Head, Research and Strategy, Oluwafemi Adebayo, contended that participation in elections is informed by people’s level of understanding of the electoral processes.
He noted that KDI had developed a platform, ‘NaijaElections’ to provide reliable information and answers to election questions and Nigeria’s democracy.
Adebayo said, “It was borne out of the need to ensure that young people and electoral stakeholders have a tool from a one-stop platform, that could answer all the electoral questions and history in Nigeria.
“We understand that this is the period of AI, and there is a need for it to be used positively for the process of the election.
“So, we deployed it to voter education, where it could be used to simplify the bulky documents of the Nigerian Constitution, the Electoral Act, and the electoral guidelines.
“The basic idea is to curb misinformation and disinformation and make sure that people are able to have information in a simplified manner.
“The platform has accessibility features such as text-to-speech and speech-to-text, the light and dark mode, language accessibility, storytelling features, among others.”
The State Team lead monitor, Ugochi Freeman explained that the monitors’ engagement is to provide a survey on security risk assessment.
She explained that the security agencies will be informed of findings that may mar the electioneering campaigns and the election.
She happily noted that it provided monitors with the right knowledge to know what to look out for when monitoring.
Some of the trained monitors, Ikechukwu Iheagwazi from Ihiala and Chidubem Nwachinemere from Anaocha LGA applauded the training.
They commended the carefully-packaged modules, which have greatly impacted their understanding of various aspects of election and election monitoring.
The monitors vowed to give their best in the discharge of the task assigned to them.
