The Kingdom of Norway on Tuesday assured that it would deploy necessary resources to assist the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deliver on its mandate.
The Ambassador of Norway to Nigeria, Mr Jens-Petter Kjemprud, gave the assurance when he visited the INEC’s headquarters in Abuja. Chief Press Secretary to INEC Chairman, Mr Rotimi Oyekanmi, in a statement quoted Kjemprud as commending INEC and Nigerians for the successful conduct of the 2015 general elections. The ambassador also commended the commission for the steps taken so far to improve the electoral process.
He invited the INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu and his team to observe the Norwegian Parliamentary Elections and undertake a Study Tour of the country between Sept. 6 and Sept.13.
Accepting the invitation, Yakubu said that the INEC had always been interested in observing elections in older democracies like Norway, to learn useful lessons. He stated that the commission was working towards making the 2019 general elections better than that of 2015.
Yakubu said there were 70 million registered voters currently on the Voter Register, while no fewer than 1,040,000 Nigerians had so far registered in the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR). “We now have 45 political parties. We used to have 40 political parties, but five have just been registered, while there are 103 pending applications.
“We don’t know how many more we are going to register, but we are a multi-party democracy and all associations that meet the criteria for registration will be registered,” Yakubu added.