2023: IPAC seeks collaboration of stakeholders to achieve free, credible elections

The Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) has emphasised the importance of collaboration between all stakeholders in the nation’s democratic project in order to guarantee the successful conduct of free, fair and credible elections in the country in 2023.

Speaking while receiving officials of the Council of the Wise Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development (SCDDD) at the IPAC headquarters in Abuja, the National Chairman of the Council, Engineer Yabagi Sani noted that next year’s general elections uniquely require the active cooperation and single-minded commitment of all key players, stakeholders and friends of the country.

Engineer Yabagi Sani explained that the prevailing challenge of insecurity in parts of the country particularly demands that all hands must be on deck in working towards ushering in the needed conducive, rancour-free atmosphere for peaceful and credible elections.

While commending the SCDDD Council of the Wise for its immense contribution to the attainment of free, fair and violence-free elections since 2015, the IPAC Chairman appealed to democracy and election-centred local and international nongovernmental organisations to remain steadfast in their commitment to the democracy project in Nigeria.

He disclosed that the IPAC has developed a comprehensive programme of reaching out to strategic institutions, agencies and key players in the electoral process on the imperative of collective efforts aimed at making the 2023 general elections peaceful, transparent and credible.

Earlier in her address, the leader of the delegation, Justice Zainab Adamu Bulkachuwa, said the visit to the IPAC, was in furtherance of the mission of the Council of ensuring the deepening of democracy in Nigeria, through “the emergence of a congenial socio-political atmosphere for peaceful, credible, free and fair elections under a responsive and responsible leadership.”

Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa who is a retired President of the Court of Appeal called on the leadership of IPAC to prevail on its members, the registered political parties, to conduct their affairs in the framework of democratic principles such as inclusive participation, equity and fairness and to as well, ” fully comply with the electoral laws and guidelines issued by the electoral umpire, INEC, in order to develop a culture of integrity and trust.”

She said the Council of the Wise would like to remind the IPAC leadership that, for Nigeria to develop, “there must be stable good governance, which could best be put in place through free, fair and transparent elections “.

The former President of the nation’s Court of Appeal advised Nigerians to once more prove the prophets of doom and our detractors wrong, by making a success of the forthcoming 2023 elections adding that the political parties especially, “owe it a duty to the Nigerian people to improve upon and consolidate the democratic successes so far achieved in the country.”

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