TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
Ahead of the 2024 Ondo gubernatorial election which is scheduled by the Independent National Electoral Commission to hold on November 16, 2024, a non-governmental organization, Justice, Development and Peace Makers’ Centre (JDPMC), Osogbo has expressed readiness to track the campaign finance of political parties.
The NGO disclosed that the move is to ensure integrity in the electoral process and expose the usage of state resources for personal ambition.
To achieve this, JDPMC has trained and deployed 16 campaign finance trackers with three investigative journalists across the 18 local government areas of the state to track campaign finance expenditure of the major political parties and the use of state administrative resources by the ruling political party.
Speaking after the 2-day training organised by the centre under the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) Phase II, the project manager, Festus Ojewumi said there is an urgent need to further strengthen democracy in Nigeria through promotion of electoral integrity.
According to him, a level playing field for all political party contestants irrespective of their political affiliations during the state governorship election would be achieved with the project.
He said: “Past experience had shown high level of non-compliance to the Electoral Act by the political parties and candidates especially in the area of campaign finance regulation and the use of state administrative resources by the incumbent which usually give birth to poor governance, hence, the training.’’
Ojewumi said that the trained personnel have been well equipped to track various political campaign events like mega-rallies, door-to-door campaigns and ward meetings.
“The trained trackers shall also track political campaign materials like billboards, banners among others with the use of parallel expense tracking methodology,” he added.
Reacting to the integrity of the trackers and the data that would be submitted, Ojewumi assured the general public of well-articulated and well verified report both before and after the 2024 Ondo Governorship Election as the trackers had been well equipped with advanced technological tool such as mobile application known as Just-Watcher to track the campaign finance process including other data quality assurance (DQA) methodologies which shall be carried out before, during and after the poll.
