The European Union (EU) has announced that it will deploy 272 observers to Anambra State to monitor the governorship election scheduled for 8th November 2025.
The EU is making the deployment under its Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) project, which it said is to collaborate with all relevant actors to ensure free, credible, and fair elections in the state and the country in general.
It said its Observation Missions enhance their engagement with partner countries and support their efforts to fulfil their international human rights obligations.
Speaking at a two-day “Watch the Vote (WTV)” training of trainers on Wednesday in Abuja, Director of Programmes for Yiaga Africa, Mrs Cynthia Mbamalu, a member of the inclusivity cluster of EU-SDGN, said they will deploy the methodology of Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVD) for the 8th November 2025 governorship polls.
While noting that the methodology for election observation had been deployed as far back as 2016, she said, “The beauty of the PRVD is that it leverages statistics and technology to assess the quality of the elections, the process, and to verify if election results are a true reflection of the votes cast at the polling units.”
She said: “With this methodology, we can provide real and timely information on the election day process, and also give statements on whether the results announced by INEC reflect the votes cast.”
The trainers, who are also referred to as “Watching the Vote Trainers,” are part-time election experts who are specifically deployed to build the capacities of observers in the field.
Speaking further on the training of the trainers, Mrs Mbamalu said, “For this election, we have sampled 750 polling units across the 21 local governments in Anambra State. Each of these 250 polling unit observers will be trained in the week leading to the elections at their local government level, because every observer is recruited from their sample polling units in the local government area.”
“We’ll be training a total of 250 observers, in addition to 21 supervisors. Each
LGA has one supervisor, and then the state coordinator. So, this training today is a training of trainers for our trainers. We have 26 of them who will be deployed to train the 250 plus 22 observers in the state.”
“During elections, the data centre is set up where these trainers provide support to the observers in the field as data clerks.”
According to Mbamalu, they would look at the election holistically to ensure that their findings complement each other, and “We are providing an overall assessment of the number of state partnership elections. And we can speak confidently to the quality of the process and confidently to the quality of the results.”
She, however, appreciated the EU for always taking the opportunity to provide the resources needed to deploy the special methodology in elections.
