ABUJA, Nigeria – The National Democratic Institute (NDI) will field an international observation mission for Nigeria’s presidential and legislative elections on March 28.

The delegation members come from eight countries. The mission will be co-led by Johnnie Carson, member of the NDI Board of Directors, former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs and senior advisor at the U.S. Institute of Peace; Mahamadou Danda, former prime minister of Niger; Bill Ritter, former governor of Colorado (U.S.); and Christopher Fomunyoh, senior associate for Africa and regional director at NDI.

The mission’s findings will be presented at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, March 30.

The delegation’s purpose is to provide an accurate assessment of the conduct of the elections and demonstrate the international community’s continuing support for democratic processes in Nigeria.

NDI’s observers will have briefings in Abuja from candidates, election officials, and representatives of political parties, civil society, the media and the international community. The delegation’s work will be informed by recommendations of a pre-election assessment mission conducted jointly with the International Republican Institute in January.

After the briefings, teams of observers will deploy to locations around the country, where they will meet with local electoral authorities, party and media representatives, citizen election monitors and candidates to assess the electoral environment.

On election day, the NDI observers will visit polling sites and counting centers. They will then return to Abuja for debriefing and to prepare a preliminary statement, which will be released at the press conference.

The delegation will conduct its activities in a nonpartisan manner in accordance with Nigerian law and international standards for election monitoring set forth in the Declaration of Principles forInternational Election Observation.

The NDI mission is benefitting from close cooperation with The Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of about 400 civil society organizations in Nigeria. TMG is conducting a nationwide observation of the electoral process that will allow it to verify the accuracy of the final results. TMG plans to have observers in all of Nigeria's 774 Local Government Areas (LGAs). On election day, it will use parallel vote tabulation (PVT) methodology to observe opening, voting and counting at a representative random sample of polling sites. TMG will deploy and receive reports from observers stationed at 1,507 polling sites.

Over the past 25 years, NDI has conducted more than 150 election observation missions in 62 countries, including fielding international observation delegations for the 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 Nigerian elections.

Since Nigeria's transition from military to civilian rule in 1999, NDI has worked closely with civic and political organizations to support the development of the country's democracy. NDI is currently engaged in a five-year program with a consortium of partners that includes the Centre for Democracy and Development - Ghana, Search for Common Ground and World Learning to support the development and capacity of Nigerian election monitoring organizations and other civil society groups, and to increase the participation by marginalized groups in the country’s political process. The initiative is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.K.’s Department for International Development.

The observation mission is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.

The National Democratic Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government. More information is available at www.ndi.org.

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