International election monitoring at the level of the United Nations has been missing in Nigeria for last week's election and would be missing on Saturday for the presidential and National Assembly polls because the federal government refused to request the United Nations to observe the elections, Empowered Newswire reports.

 

Instead the Nigerian government preferred to ask ECOWAS, according to the United Nations Spokeswoman Michelle Montas while addressing reporters at the New York headquarters of the UN on Tuesday.

 

According to the Spokesperson to the UN Secretary General, Michelle Montas, the UN is not monitoring the ongoing elections in Nigeria because the federal government did not make a request to the world body to officially observe and monitor the elections.

 

Nonetheless the spokesperson said like other world leaders, the Nigerian election is being closely followed at the UN by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who she said is also very concerned.

 

Mr. Ban's spokesperson said Mr. Ban "has been following since beginning of the week (the election fallout).  He is still waiting to see how things are developing.  He's certainly concerned about it."

 

Montas was responding to media inquiries from journalists spanning over two days since Monday at the UN over why the UN is not monitoring the elections which conduct last Saturday has been drawing widespread condemnation and criticism globally.

 

For instance an article from a foremost American owned and managed Africa news website in the US, allafrica.com queried the hampering by INEC of credible independent monitoring of the polls. According to the article, while the Transition Monitoring Group, TMG mobilized over 10,000 monitors for last Saturday's election, INEC only provided ID badges for 1,000. It added that in Lagos, INEC had only 20 badges for TMG to monitor the elections.

 

Blaming both INEC and the United Nations, the article titled Urgent Action Needed to Rescue Election  said "this suggests a worrying level of either incompetence or malice: either the INEC or the UN Development Programme which was contracted to produce the materials under a joint donor arrangement were simply unable to do so, or this was part of a wider INEC design to keep local monitors from witnessing expected irregularities."
 

The article was authored by François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, the well-known US and Europe-based group whose reports on Nigeria's 2007 election had made the headlines in the western media few weeks ago.

 

Responding to media inquiries that referred to the article and other western media reports on the election the UN Spokesperson said the United Nations Secretariat is not monitoring the Nigerian election because "there was no request made," adding that Nigeria chose instead to ask ECOWAS to monitor and "ECOWAS is monitoring the elections."

 

It would be recalled that at his last media briefing before he left office as Secretary-General Kofi Annan had said if Nigeria put in a request to the UN, it was still possible at that time for the UN to still observe and monitor the Nigerian election. Montas' explanation suggested that the Nigerian government did not request for a UN observation and monitoring of the election.

 

This was the exchange between the UN Spokesperson Montas and reporters on Tuesday afternoon at the UN headquarters:

Question:  The Nigerian situation is getting increasingly deplorable.  The opposition parties have come together to say that the elections should be cancelled.  I wanted to know… what is the sense of the Secretary-General regarding what is going on in Nigeria right now with all the violence and the election manipulation?  And secondly, you said yesterday that the United Nations is not monitoring the election.  Why is that so?

 

Spokesperson:  Not directly.  ECOWAS is monitoring the election.  You have a number of other international observers accredited by the Electoral Commission.  But the UN as an institution is not.

 

Question:  But why not?  The UN has monitored elections…

 

Spokesperson:  All this depends on the request from the Member State.

 

Question:  Does that mean that Nigeria has not made a request?

 

Spokesperson:  There was no request made, and the request went to ECOWAS.  ECOWAS is monitoring the elections.

 

Question:  So what is the answer to the first question?

 

Spokesperson:  I think that this is a situation that the SG has been following since the beginning of the week.  He is still waiting to see how things are developing.  He’s certainly concerned about it

Question:  To follow-up on the question on Nigeria, it was reported that UNDP was actually asked to help with some aspects of the election.  I’m not sure if they have, but that they were asked to do it.  Is that a request to the UN?  When you said the UN had no role in the election, is that just the Secretariat or the UN system as a whole?

 

Spokesperson:  I would be surprised that UNDP would be asked to participate as an electoral observer.  It would be the United Nations Secretariat that would be seized of the matter, not UNDP.  

 

Question:  You mean the observers?

 

Spokesperson:  I’m talking about international observers to the election.

Later Michelle Montas clarified the role of UNDP thus:
"While the UN is not observing, as I said, the Nigerian elections, but we have been providing advisory services and technical assistance to Nigeria’s Election Commission through UNDP, which is managing a basket fund of assistance from multiple donors.  So that is the role that UNDP is playing."