NIGERIA 2015- People’s votes must count —TMG •Launches Quick Count for presidential election

AS Nigerians begin to prepare for the conduct of 2015 general elections, the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), on Tuesday, launched its 2015 Quick Count project in Abuja.

The Quick Count project will provide the most accurate information on the conduct of voting and counting processes on election day, as well as independently verify the accuracy of official results as announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Chairman of TMG, a premier election observer group, Mr Zikirullahi Ibrahim, speaking at ceremony in Abuja, people’s vote must count in the 2015 general elections.

He explained that the Quick Could would give voters confidence in the electoral process and reduce the potential for post-election violence by providing independent non-partisan verification of the official results of the elections announced by the INEC.

According to him, TMG’s Quick Count observers would send reports in near real time via coded text messages to a sophisticated National Information Centre using mobile phones.

Ibrahim said: “With the February 2015 elections on the horizon, TMG has already started preparations to support an essential component of a functioning democracy— the elections.

“Typically, all election observer groups strive to deter  fraud and build confidence that election results will reflect the will of the people.

“However, TMG goes a step further than any other observer group in Nigeria to determine whether election processes are genuinely democratic.  How do we do this? TMG has adopted the parallel vote tabulation methodology, which we term Quick Count.”

He added that through the TMG Quick Count, “non-partisan citizen observers will be deployed to a random, representative sample of polling units across the country to report on the opening, accreditation, voting and counting processes during election, as well as collect voting results and voter turnout figures.”