Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The West African Network of Peacebuilders (WANEP), in partnership with the Economic Community of West African State (ECOWAS) and African Union (AU), on Friday night, opened its situation room for the monitoring of the presidential and National Assembly elections on Saturday.
It also announced that to facilitate the success of the situation room, it had deployed 114 observers, three per state and the Federal Capital Territory.
Addressing the media at its maiden briefing in Abuja, Professor Isaac Albert, co-chairman of the Eminent Persons Group, Chukwuemeka Eze, Executive Director WANEP and Aisha Ado Abdullahi, co-chairman of the Eminent Persons Group, said the goal of WANEP and its partners “is to identify problems and work with relevant stakeholders in solving the problem. Our focus is on early warning and early response.”
Abdullahi said in addition to the 114 observers deployed, 37 personnel comprising data collectors, analysts, communication experts and eminent persons would be in the situation room during the four (Friday to Monday) days it would be operational.
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She said to facilitate the observation, WANEP collaborated with ECOWAS Early Warning Directorate to develop a user-friendly Arc GIS, a live-online mobile application platform to generate data from the field observers to the situation room.
The co-chairman of the Eminent Persons Group, added that the Election Situation Room was divided into four rooms – data gathering room, analysis room, decision room and the communication room.
WANEP is the leading peace and security organisation in West Africa, working in partnership with ECOWAS and AU in monitoring and analysing security threat, including elections and electoral process in the ECOWAS member states.