The ECOWAS Network of Electoral Commissions (ECONEC) has said the lessons learnt from Nigeria’s 2023 General Election will be the benchmark to improve the conduct of elections in West Africa.

The leader of the group promoting the conduct of credible elections, Davidetta Browne-Lansanah, said this during a follow-up and needs assessment visit to the Abuja headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday. She said the recommendations would situate individual election management bodies.

The National Elections Commission of Liberia chairman explained that the purpose of the visit was to understudy the implementation of the recommendations.

Browne-Lansanah said: “We anticipate that during our engagement, we may be able to understand reasons for some of the issues that came out of the 2023 elections and how INEC was able to navigate in a way that it has found answers to those challenges that abound during the 2023 elections.” According to her, ECONEC views the mission as a lesson learned, “not just for INEC Nigeria, but also for our own institutions, our own election management bodies”.

INEC Chairman Mahmood Yakubu said the Commission had reviewed all recommendations made by the ECOWAS Election Observation Mission (EOM) following Nigeria’s 2023 general election. According to him, they have taken steps on those within its administrative mandate while awaiting legislative action on others.

Yakubu said the observer mission had issued 37 recommendations, of which 13 were addressed to INEC and 24 to other institutions, including the National Assembly, security agencies, regulators, civil society organisations, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), and political parties under the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC)