Romanus Ugwu
The European Union (EU) has revealed that it has committed over £100 million to the conduct of important elections in Nigeria from the Fourth Republic in 1999 to date.
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EU’s Electoral Administration and Communication expert, Manji Wilson, made this disclosure while presenting a paper: “Overview of the EU Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria,” at the two-day capacity building programme for journalists organised by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Abuja.
He explained that the funds were spent on providing technical assistance for the elections.
He, however, warned that the body has no preferred candidate among all the presidential candidates in the 2019 general elections, insisting that the EU has no iota of influence on who wins the elections.
He decried the outrageous amounts most of the political parties were charging candidates for the Expression of Interest and Nomination Forms, regretting that the conduct had denied Nigerian youths active participation in the 2019 elections. He regretted that out of thousands of them seeking elective positions, only 219 eventually got the nomination of their parties for the 2019 general elections.