Former Ghanaian President John Mahama will be leading a mediation team of the West African Elders Forum (WAEF) to Nigeria ahead of the country’s 2023 general elections.
The WAEF team is expected to arrive in Abuja on Wednesday, 22 February, and would be on ground for the Presidential/National Assembly elections on 25 February and the Governorship/States’ Assembly elections on 11 March, 2023.
Joining the former Ghanaian president on the team are former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, former Beninese President Boni Yayi, former Gambian Vice President Fatoumata Tambajang, former Burkinabe Prime Minister and ECOWAS President Kadre Ouedraogo, and former African Union (AU) Deputy Chair Erastus Mwencha, Wealth Dickson Ominabo, Communications Officer, Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, said in a statement.
The focus and activities of the WAEF, composed of former Presidents and Heads of Government in West Africa, is to interface with key stakeholders and provide the necessary support that would ensure peaceful elections, Ominabo quoted Ann Iyonu, executive director, Goodluck Jonathan Foundation and coordinator of the WAEF Secretariat, as saying ahead of the team’s arrival.
Iyonu explained that the leaders would be working with key stakeholders in the elections and the observer missions to ensure a crisis-free process before, during, and after the elections.
She said unlike other observer missions, the forum has a special focus on election-related conflicts, and that the elders would be on ground for a longer time, “interacting with the candidates, political parties and members, the citizens, the election umpire, observers, and other key stakeholders; all the time looking out for crisis triggers, with the mind of nipping them in the bud by offering mediatory roles and giving relevant advice to ensure peaceful polling, based on their personal experiences as former leaders of the sub-region, while calling for individual accountability by those who by their actions or inactions undermine the democratic process and endanger lives”.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports Ominabo as saying that during the Gambian elections last December, WAEF carried out a similar engagement where it deployed a team led by former President Jonathan. The presence of the WAEF team in the Gambia and its mediatory activities, especially after the elections, helped to resolve post-election tensions that threatened the integrity and outcome of the polling, he said.
The WAEF team is expected to be in Abuja this week to witness the second signing of the National Peace Accord by the presidential candidates and chairpersons of political parties, aimed not only at ensuring peaceful electioneering but also at committing the candidates to accepting the outcome of the elections.
A WAEF delegation had earlier visited Nigeria in December to undertake a pre-election mediation mission, during which it held strategic engagements with key stakeholders from 4 to 6 December, 2022.
WAEF, an initiative of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, was established to serve as a home-grown and non-partisan platform for past heads of state and government in West Africa. As a platform, it draws on the experience and standing of its members to provide advisory, mediation, and conflict resolution support services to political leaders by bringing useful and non-partisan insights and skills for defusing tension and reconciling positions for the sake of the sustenance and advancement of democracy not only in West Africa but the entire continent.
