Group to monitor campaign finances in Ondo election, deploys trained trackers

A non-governmental organisation (NGO), Justice, Development and Peace Makers’ Centre (JDPMC) in Osogbo, has expressed its readiness to track the campaign finances of political parties in the forthcoming Ondo State gubernatorial election scheduled to hold on November 16, 2024.

The NGO said that the move would ensure integrity in the electoral process and expose the usage of state resources for personal ambition. To achieve this, JDPMC said it had trained and deployed 16 campaign finance trackers with three investigative journalists across the 18 local councils of the state to track campaign finance expenditure of the major political parties and the use of state administrative resources by the ruling political party.

The Project Manager, Festus Ojewumi, who spoke after the two-day training organised by the Centre under the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) Phase II, said there is an urgent need to further strengthen democracy in Nigeria through promotion of electoral integrity.

According to him, a level-playing field for all contestants, irrespective of their political affiliations during the state governorship election, would be achieved with the project.

Ojewumi said that the trained personnel had been well-equipped to track various political campaign events, such as mega-rallies, door-to-door campaigns and ward meetings.

Ojewumi assured the public of well-articulated and well-verified report before and after the Ondo governorship election as the trackers had been well-equipped with advanced technological tool.

such as mobile application known as just-watcher to track the campaign finance process, including other data quality assurance (DQA) methodologies which shall be carried out before, during and after the poll.