We won’t observe elections in North East, says EU

The European Union (EU) election monitoring team has said due to the security situation in the North East none of its 90-man delegation will go to the region to observe the February polls.

Santiago Fisas, the chief observer of the European Union delegation, made this known to newsmen after an interactive session with Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Abuja.

According to him, the European Union delegation has been on ground since November 2014 in readiness for the February polls but with the increasing Boko Haram attacks in the North East it may be possible that none of its members would be dispatched to the region.

“The European Union electoral mission is a big mission, it’s a mission that started in November, it’s not ‎only what happens on the electoral day that we duel on but what happens in the space of time, how the primaries have been done and how the political parties respected the law in their conducts.

“We also follow keenly the propaganda in the media and also afterwards ‎any possible claim after the elections.

“As for the North East we can’t be there for security reasons, but we have people deployed very close to the North East and we have contact there. We have them in Zaria and other places.

“We have better information on the North East but the present situation will not allow us to go there”, he said.

When asked if the delegation will also be meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan just as it met with the APC presidential candidate, Fisas affirmed that they will meet the president in due course but he did not disclose what will take the centre stage of discussion in the meeting.
On his part, Buhari expressed optimism that the European Union observers will do their job optimally.
According to him, “They have been covering other countries’ elections although not exactly similar to our own country. They are very experienced people and qualify to cover the coming elections.”
“As we have observed, they cannot cover over 120,000 polling units but they will place people in strategic places to observe them”, Buhari said.