EU Not Interested in Whoever Wins Nigeria's Presidential Elections -Official

                            
The European Union (EU) Election Observation Mission on the upcoming elections in Nigeria said on Wednesday in Abuja that the Union had no interest in who would win the presidential election.

The Deputy Chief Observer of the mission, Ms Hannah Roberts, who stated this in a session with journalists said that EU was an impartial body in the elections. According to her, the mission is purely in Nigeria to monitor the forthcoming elections and think of how to improve on future elections based on its observations.

We are outsiders, we are independent; we have no interest in who wins or losses. What really impresses us is the process. So, sometimes it is easy for people to trust us because we are independent,’’ she said.

Roberts also said that the mission was different from and independent of the EU embassies in Nigeria, explaianing that ``the idea of this is that we don’t need to protect the long term vested interest’’.

She added that the mission had a standard for monitoring election of any country, saying that the mission considered the national laws and the international treaties a country was signatory to in accepting to monitor its elections.

''We look at the political commitment which the country has made. The focus or trust of activities is in what the country says it wants to do. We compare what is contained in the national legislation and then in the international commitments and obligations that the country has made,’’ she stated.

The deputy chief observer said that the work of the mission was complementary to the work of citizens’ election observers.

She, however, pointed out that indigenous observers had the numerical strength to be in many places, adding that they understood the political contest better than the international observers.

She disclosed that EU had a long history of monitoring elections in Nigeria as it observed the 2003, 2007 and 2011 general elections in the country.

According to her, the country’s election in 2011 witnessed significant improvement over previous ones.

Roberts expressed the hope that Nigeria would be committed to improving its electoral process ahead of subsequent elections in the country.

''We encourage people to keep paying attention to elections, not just at the heat of an election but in-between. That is a good time for election reform,’’ she said.