Election: Jonathan leads West African elders to Senegal

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has led the West African Elders Forum (WAEF) to Senegal on a mediation mission ahead of the country’s presidential election on Saturday.

This is contained in a statement signed and issued in Yenagoa on Thursday by the Communications Officer of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, Wealth Ominabo.

According to the statement, Mr Jonathan, who is also the chairperson of WAEF, with other members of the forum left Abuja for Dakar on Thursday, to be there till Wednesday.

The statement named Mohamed Ibn Chambas, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel, as a member of the team.

According to the statement, the team will meet with key stakeholders, including outgoing President Macky Sall, opposition leaders, civil societies, security authorities, and the country’s electoral commission.

The statement quoted the Executive Director of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation and Head of the WAEF Secretariat, Ann Iyonu, as saying that WAEF was a “forum primed for mediation”.

According to Mrs Iyonu, the forum expects to perform advisory and conflict resolution roles to ensure election-related conflicts are reduced to the barest minimum in the West Africa sub-region.

She described the forum as a composition of former presidents and statesmen who had volunteered to deploy their enormous leadership experience and wisdom toward promoting peace and progress in the sub-region.

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Mrs Iyonu, in the statement, said while in Dakar, the forum would observe electoral processes and continue to engage political leaders and other stakeholders until the election was peacefully and successfully concluded.

“WAEF, going by this mandate, had played similar roles during elections in The Gambia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Liberia,” she said in the statement.

(NAN)